3D Shape Modeling and Analysis of Retinal Microvasculature in OCT-Angiography Images

Jiong Zhang, Yuchuan Qiao, Mona Sharifi Sarabi, Maziyar M. Khansari, Jin K. Gahm, Amir H. Kashani, Yonggang Shi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

3D optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) is a novel and non-invasive imaging modality for analyzing retinal diseases. The studies of microvasculature in 2D en face projection images have been widely implemented, but comprehensive 3D analysis of OCT-A images with rich depth-resolved microvascular information is rarely considered. In this paper, we propose a robust, effective, and automatic 3D shape modeling framework to provide a high-quality 3D vessel representation and to preserve valuable 3D geometric and topological information for vessel analysis. Effective vessel enhancement and extraction steps by means of curvelet denoising and optimally oriented flux (OOF) filtering are first designed to produce 3D microvascular networks. Afterwards, a novel 3D data representation of OCT-A microvasculature is reconstructed via advanced mesh reconstruction techniques. Based on the 3D surfaces, shape analysis is established to extract novel shape-based microvascular area distortion via the Laplace-Beltrami eigen-projection. The extracted feature is integrated into a graph-cut segmentation system to categorize large vessels and small capillaries for more precise shape analysis. The proposed framework is validated on a dedicated repeated scan dataset including 260 volume images and shows high repeatability. Statistical analysis using the surface area biomarker is performed on small capillaries to avoid the effect of tailing artifact from large vessels. It shows significant differences ( $p< 0.001$ ) between DR stages on 100 subjects in a OCTA-DR dataset. The proposed shape modeling and analysis framework opens the possibility for further investigating OCT-A microvasculature in a new perspective.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number8879535
Pages (from-to)1335-1346
Number of pages12
JournalIEEE transactions on medical imaging
Volume39
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Optical coherence tomography angiography
  • diabetic retinopathy
  • retinal microvasculature
  • shape analysis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Radiological and Ultrasound Technology
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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