The corneal sub-basal nerve plexus (SNP) is a network of thin, unmyelinated nerve fibers located between the basal epithelium and the Bowman’s membrane. Both corneal and systemic diseases such as keratoconus and diabetic can alter the nerve fiber density, thickness and tortuosity. Recent developments of cellular resolution OCT technology allowed for in-vivo visualization and mapping of the corneal SNP. We have developed a fully automated algorithm for segmentation of corneal nerves. The performance of the algorithm was tested on a series of enface UHR-OCT images acquired in-vivo from healthy human subjects. The proposed algorithm traces most of the sub-basal corneal nerves correctly. The achieved processing time and tracing quality are the major advantages of the proposed method. Results show the potential application of proposed method for nerve analysis and morphometric quantification of human sub-basal corneal nerves which is an important tool in corneal related diseases.

Date Published: 28 February 2019
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 10858, Ophthalmic Technologies XXIX, 1085823 (28 February 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2513288

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10858:
Ophthalmic Technologies XXIX
Fabrice Manns; Per G. Söderberg; Arthur Ho, Editor(s)