Purpose
Identification of features of glaucoma progression informs clinical management. While flicker chronoscopy is useful, a dynamic view is not always possible. Auto-alignment and subtraction of serial optic nerve photos (ASSOP) was used to generate static representations of differences between baseline and follow-up images that may be valuable for identifying glaucomatous change.
Methods
Subtraction maps were generated from auto-aligned (EyeIC, Narbeth, PA) baseline and follow up images using Adobe Photoshop software. They demonstrate progressive retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) defects, optic disc hemorrhage (DH), neuroretinal rim loss (RL), and peripapillary atrophy (PPA). A masked glaucoma specialist identified features of progression on subtraction map first, then assessed feature strength by comparison with original images using flicker. Control images with no progression and parallax-only images were included.
Results
Seventy-six eyes of 71 patients were used to generate subtraction maps that detected glaucoma progression in 87% of DH (n=31, Sensitivity (Se) 84%, Specificity (Sp) 98%) and 84% of PPA (n=32, Se 81%, Sp 98%) cases. The lowest rates of detection were seen with RL (67%, n=31, Se 65%, Sp 98%). The subtraction technique was most sensitive for detecting parallax (41 of 40, Se 98%, Sp 94%). All features of glaucoma progression appeared equally strong in flicker and subtraction images. However, parallax was stronger in 13% of subtraction maps overall and in 50% of images containing RNFL defects in particular. Among control images selected for absence of features of glaucomatous change (n=11) in original flicker images, no features were detected on subtraction maps.
Conclusions
ASSOP reliably detects features of glaucoma progression with a single static image. Parallax identification may also be facilitated. Future investigations should determine an algorithm that can be uniformly applied to any set of temporally-spaced and aligned images to create a subtraction map yielding the highest quality visualization of change.
Keywords: 549 image processing •
551 imaging/image analysis: non-clinical