Corneal endothelium assessment in specular microscopy images with Fuchs’ dystrophy via deep regression of signed distance maps published in Biomedical Optics Express

Example of final segmentation with the UNet-dm of the specular microscopy image of a severe case of cornea guttata. (Image by the Authors of the manuscript.)
Corneal endothelium assessment in specular microscopy images with Fuchs’ dystrophy via deep regression of signed distance maps
Juan S. Sierra, Jesus Pineda, Daniela Rueda, Alejandro Tello, Angelica M. Prada, Virgilio Galvis, Giovanni Volpe, Maria S. Millan, Lenny A. Romero, Andres G. Marrugo
Biomedical Optics Express 14, 335-351 (2023)
doi: 10.1364/BOE.477495
arXiv: 2210.07102

Specular microscopy assessment of the human corneal endothelium (CE) in Fuchs’ dystrophy is challenging due to the presence of dark image regions called guttae. This paper proposes a UNet-based segmentation approach that requires minimal post-processing and achieves reliable CE morphometric assessment and guttae identification across all degrees of Fuchs’ dystrophy. We cast the segmentation problem as a regression task of the cell and gutta signed distance maps instead of a pixel-level classification task as typically done with UNets. Compared to the conventional UNet classification approach, the distance-map regression approach converges faster in clinically relevant parameters. It also produces morphometric parameters that agree with the manually-segmented ground-truth data, namely the average cell density difference of -41.9 cells/mm2 (95% confidence interval (CI) [-306.2, 222.5]) and the average difference of mean cell area of 14.8 um2 (95% CI [-41.9, 71.5]). These results suggest a promising alternative for CE assessment.

Soft Matter Lab presentations at the SPIE Optics+Photonics Digital Forum

Seven members of the Soft Matter Lab (Saga HelgadottirBenjamin Midtvedt, Aykut Argun, Laura Pérez-GarciaDaniel MidtvedtHarshith BachimanchiEmiliano Gómez) were selected for oral and poster presentations at the SPIE Optics+Photonics Digital Forum, August 24-28, 2020.

The SPIE digital forum is a free, online only event.
The registration for the Digital Forum includes access to all presentations and proceedings.

The Soft Matter Lab contributions are part of the SPIE Nanoscience + Engineering conferences, namely the conference on Emerging Topics in Artificial Intelligence 2020 and the conference on Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation XVII.

The contributions being presented are listed below, including also the presentations co-authored by Giovanni Volpe.

Note: the presentation times are indicated according to PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) (GMT-7)

Emerging Topics in Artificial Intelligence 2020

Saga Helgadottir
Digital video microscopy with deep learning (Invited Paper)
26 August 2020, 10:30 AM
SPIE Link: here.

Aykut Argun
Calibration of force fields using recurrent neural networks
26 August 2020, 8:30 AM
SPIE Link: here.

Laura Pérez-García
Deep-learning enhanced light-sheet microscopy
25 August 2020, 9:10 AM
SPIE Link: here.

Daniel Midtvedt
Holographic characterization of subwavelength particles enhanced by deep learning
24 August 2020, 2:40 PM
SPIE Link: here.

Benjamin Midtvedt
DeepTrack: A comprehensive deep learning framework for digital microscopy
26 August 2020, 11:40 AM
SPIE Link: here.

Gorka Muñoz-Gil
The anomalous diffusion challenge: Single trajectory characterisation as a competition
26 August 2020, 12:00 PM
SPIE Link: here.

Meera Srikrishna
Brain tissue segmentation using U-Nets in cranial CT scans
25 August 2020, 2:00 PM
SPIE Link: here.

Juan S. Sierra
Automated corneal endothelium image segmentation in the presence of cornea guttata via convolutional neural networks
26 August 2020, 11:50 AM
SPIE Link: here.

Harshith Bachimanchi
Digital holographic microscopy driven by deep learning: A study on marine planktons (Poster)
24 August 2020, 5:30 PM
SPIE Link: here.

Emiliano Gómez
BRAPH 2.0: Software for the analysis of brain connectivity with graph theory (Poster)
24 August 2020, 5:30 PM
SPIE Link: here.

Optical Trapping and Optical Micromanipulation XVII

Laura Pérez-García
Reconstructing complex force fields with optical tweezers
24 August 2020, 5:00 PM
SPIE Link: here.

Alejandro V. Arzola
Direct visualization of the spin-orbit angular momentum conversion in optical trapping
25 August 2020, 10:40 AM
SPIE Link: here.

Isaac Lenton
Illuminating the complex behaviour of particles in optical traps with machine learning
26 August 2020, 9:10 AM
SPIE Link: here.

Fatemeh Kalantarifard
Optical trapping of microparticles and yeast cells at ultra-low intensity by intracavity nonlinear feedback forces
24 August 2020, 11:10 AM
SPIE Link: here.

Note: the presentation times are indicated according to PDT (Pacific Daylight Time) (GMT-7)