Deep Learning Using Preoperative Optical Coherence Tomography Images to Predict Visual Acuity Following Surgery for Idiopathic Full-Thickness Macular Holes

Abstract

This study presents a fully automated image informatics framework. The framework is combined with a deep learning (DL) approach to automatically predict visual acuity outcomes for people undergoing surgery for idiopathic full-thickness macular holes using 3D spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) images. To overcome the impact of high variation in real-world image quality on the robustness of DL models, comprehensive imaging data pre-processing, quality assurance, and anomaly detection procedures were utilised. We then implemented, trained, and tested nine state-of-the-art DL predictive models through our designed loss function with multiple 2D input channels on the imaging dataset. Finally, we quantitatively compared the models using four evaluation metrics. Overall, the predictive model achieved a MAE of 6.47 ETDRS letters score, demonstrating high predictability. This confirms that our fully automated approach with input from seven central SD-OCT images from each patient can robustly predict visual acuity measurements. Further research will focus on adapting 3D DL-based predictive models and the uncertainty of 2D and 3D DL-based predictive models.INDEX TERMS Image analysis, machine learning, optical coherence tomography, visual acuity measurement.