<span lang="EN-US">Light penetrates the human eye through the cornea, which is the outer part of the eye, and then the cornea directs it to the pupil to determine the amount of light that reaches the lens of the eye. Accordingly, the human cornea must not be exposed to any damage or disease that may lead to human vision disturbances. Such damages can be revealed by topographic images used by ophthalmologists. Consequently, an important priority is the early and accurate diagnosis of diseases that may affect corneal integrity through the use of machine learning algorithms, particularly, use of local feature extractions for the image. Accordingly, we suggest a new algorithm called local information pattern (LIP) descriptor to overcome the lack of local binary patterns that loss of information from the image and solve the problem of image rotation. The LIP based on utilizing the sub-image center intensity for estimating neighbors' weights that can use to calculate what so-called contrast based centre (CBC). On the other hand, calculating local pattern (LP) for each block image, to distinguish between two sub-images having the same CBC. LP is the sum of transitions of neighbors' weights, from sub-image center value to one and vice versa. Finally, creating histograms for both CBC and LP, then blending them to represent a robust local feature vector. Which can use for diagnosing, detecting.</span>

Clinical keratoconus (KCN) detection is a challenging and time-consuming task. In the diagnosis process, ophthalmologists must revise demographic and clinical ophthalmic examinations. The latter include slit-lamb, corneal topographic maps, and Pentacam indices (PI). We propose an Ensemble of Deep Transfer Learning (EDTL) based on corneal topographic maps. We consider four pretrained networks, SqueezeNet (SqN), AlexNet (AN), ShuffleNet (SfN), and MobileNet-v2 (MN), and fine-tune them on a dataset of KCN and normal cases, each including four topographic maps. We also consider a PI classifier. Then, our EDTL method combines the output probabilities of each of the five classifiers to obtain a decision based on the fusion of probabilities. Individually, the classifier based on PI achieved 93.1% accuracy, whereas the deep classifiers reached classification accuracies over 90% only in isolated cases. Overall, the average accuracy of the deep networks over the four corneal maps ranged from 86% (SfN) to 89.9% (AN). The classifier ensemble increased the accuracy of the deep classifiers based on corneal maps to values ranging (92.2% to 93.1%) for SqN and (93.1% to 94.8%) for AN. Including in the ensemble-specific combinations of corneal maps’ classifiers and PI increased the accuracy to 98.3%. Moreover, visualization of first learner filters in the networks and Grad-CAMs confirmed that the networks had learned relevant clinical features. This study shows the potential of creating ensembles of deep classifiers fine-tuned with a transfer learning strategy as it resulted in an improved accuracy while showing learnable filters and Grad-CAMs that agree with clinical knowledge. This is a step further towards the potential clinical deployment of an improved computer-assisted diagnosis system for KCN detection to help ophthalmologists to confirm the clinical decision and to perform fast and accurate KCN treatment.

Machine learning techniques become more related to medical researches by using medical images as a dataset. It is categorized and analyzed for ultimate effectiveness in diagnosis or decision-making for diseases. Machine learning techniques have been exploited in numerous researches related to corneal diseases, contribution to ophthalmologists for diagnosing the diseases and comprehending the way automated learning techniques act. Nevertheless, confusion still exists in the type of data used, whether it is images, data extracted from images or clinical data, the course reliant on the type of device for obtaining them. In this study, the researches that used machine learning were reviewed and classified in terms of the kind of utilized machine for capturing data, along with the latest updates in sophisticated approaches for corneal disease diagnostic techniques.

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Corneal diseases are the most common eye disorders. Deep learning techniques are used to perform automated diagnoses of cornea. Deep learning networks require large-scale annotated datasets, which is conceded as a weakness of deep learning. In this work, a method for synthesizing medical images using conditional generative adversarial networks (CGANs), is presented. It also illustrates how produced medical images may be utilized to enrich medical data, improve clinical decisions, and boost the performance of the conventional neural network (CNN) for medical image diagnosis. The study includes using corneal topography captured using a Pentacam device from patients with corneal diseases. The dataset contained 3448 different corneal images. Furthermore, it shows how an unbalanced dataset affects the performance of classifiers, where the data are balanced using the resampling approach. Finally, the results obtained from CNN networks trained on the balanced dataset are compared to those obtained from CNN networks trained on the imbalanced dataset. For performance, the system estimated the diagnosis accuracy, precision, and F1-score metrics. Lastly, some generated images were shown to an expert for evaluation and to see how well experts could identify the type of image and its condition. The expert recognized the image as useful for medical diagnosis and for determining the severity class according to the shape and values, by generating images based on real cases that could be used as new different stages of illness between healthy and unhealthy patients.

Detection of early clinical keratoconus (KCN) is a challenging task, even for expert clinicians. In this study, we propose a deep learning (DL) model to address this challenge. We first used Xception and InceptionResNetV2 DL architectures to extract features from three different corneal maps collected from 1371 eyes examined in an eye clinic in Egypt. We then fused features using Xception and InceptionResNetV2 to detect subclinical forms of KCN more accurately and robustly. We obtained an area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of 0.99 and an accuracy range of 97–100% to distinguish normal eyes from eyes with subclinical and established KCN. We further validated the model based on an independent dataset with 213 eyes examined in Iraq and obtained AUCs of 0.91–0.92 and an accuracy range of 88–92%. The proposed model is a step toward improving the detection of clinical and subclinical forms of KCN.

Despite a sufficient energy supply, harvesting energy from rainfall is essential for intelligent water management. A significant part is still untapped or little exploited, which is the renewable energy produced from rainwater. This paper proposes a portable gutter of the rainwater energy harvesting system to provide electricity that may be sufficient for powering lights and charging cell phones in rainy locations with limited electricity. A prototype is designed and tested to determine the feasibility of rainwater as a source of renewable energy. The aim is to minimize and respectively suspend the use of fossil energy sources, as well as decrease the percentage of pollution as it is a cause of global warming. The system prototype consisted of a gutter assembly that collected and funneled water from the roof to a downspout. The turbine was connected through a gearbox to a DC motor serving as the generator. The device is optimal during high rainfall intensities that produce larger flow rates. A smart algorithm has been applied, which is salutary to keep the system working and has the ability to control the flow of collected rainfall water. Also, this system is useful to install and use in the rural area where the national grids are not common and the level of rainfall is high. The applied system utilized and installed in more than one hundred premises can produce more than 4 kWh for one rain. In some countries such as Malaysia, the average number of rainy days is 250 days a year, so the use of this system in 100 premises can help to provide 80 MWh to the national grid yearly. The system is characterized by simplicity of design and lack of complexity in addition to ease of installation and cheapness, which is the basis for the availability of this system for use by everyone

Photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) is the refractive technique that began with a physical scraping of the epithelial layer of cornea subsequent by laser treatment. Post this procedure to about 48 hours the removed epithelial layer regenerated to protect the eye again. The regeneration process (called re-epithelization) started from the limbus of the cornea toward the central part of it. The re-epithelization mechanism consists of a change in cell density (mitosis) and cell concentration (migration) with a velocity in two directions: radial and tangential. In the present study, an estimation for both radial (responsible for the overlapped layers toward the outward direction of the cornea) and tangential components (contour shape wave from limbus to the center) has been done for the first time, not like the previous studies that always estimate the velocity values of the re-epithelization only. Results showed that the trend shape of both components agrees with the kinematic behaviour of the mitosis and migration, where the maximum cell density fluctuated toward the central part in exponential decay shape. For a healing diameter of 2mm, the maximum redial velocity was 16.85 µm/h, while the maximum tangential velocity was 55.48 µm/h. These two components give a speed of re-epithelization of 58 µm/h which agrees with the biological and practical healing speed measured of 60 µm/h. Estimating these two components will open the way to understand the relationship between the total epithelial layer required and the total healing time to control the medication period for the patient post-surgery.