Novel medical imaging technologies for processing epithelium and endothelium layers in corneal confocal images. Developing automated segmentation and quantification algorithms for processing sub-basal epithelium nerves and endothelial cells for early diagnosis of diabetic neuropathy in corneal confocal microscope images
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PhD Thesis (5.217Mb)
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Publication date
2018Supervisor
Qahwaji, Rami S.R.Ipson, Stanley S.
Keyword
Medical imagingDiabetic peripheral neuropathy
Corneal confocal microscopy
Automatic nerve segmentation
Corneal sub-basal epithelium
Automatic nerve segmentation
Anisotropic diffusion filtering
Corneal endothelial cells
Automatic cell segmentation
Fast Fourier transformWatershed transformation
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The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Institution
University of BradfordDepartment
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceAwarded
2018Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy (DPN) is one of the most common types of diabetes that can affect the cornea. An accurate analysis of the corneal epithelium nerve structures and the corneal endothelial cell can assist early diagnosis of this disease and other corneal diseases, which can lead to visual impairment and then to blindness. In this thesis, fully-automated segmentation and quantification algorithms for processing and analysing sub-basal epithelium nerves and endothelial cells are proposed for early diagnosis of diabetic neuropathy in Corneal Confocal Microscopy (CCM) images. Firstly, a fully automatic nerve segmentation system for corneal confocal microscope images is proposed. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated against manually traced images with an execution time of the prototype is 13 seconds. Secondly, an automatic corneal nerve registration system is proposed. The main aim of this system is to produce a new informative corneal image that contains structural and functional information. Thirdly, an automated real-time system, termed the Corneal Endothelium Analysis System (CEAS) is developed and applied for the segmentation of endothelial cells in images of human cornea obtained by In Vivo CCM. The performance of the proposed CEAS system was tested against manually traced images with an execution time of only 6 seconds per image. Finally, the results obtained from all the proposed approaches have been evaluated and validated by an expert advisory board from two institutes, they are the Division of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, Doha, Qatar and the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, Centre for Endocrinology and Diabetes, UK.Type
ThesisQualification name
PhDCollections
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