Morphological and topological image analysis for clinical diagnostics and monitoring of cornea damage

用于角膜损伤临床诊断和监测的形态学和拓扑图像分析

• 批准号: ST/S002383/1
• 负责人: Anvar Shukurov
• 金额: $ 8.61万
• 依托单位: Newcastle University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ST%2FS002383%2F1
• 关键词: Morphological; topological; image; analysis; clinical

The cornea is the transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris, pupil, and anterior chamber. A clear cornea is essential for good vision. Chemical and thermal burns to the eye constitute a serious form of injury with potentially catastrophic long-term consequences to patients including chronic eye pain, poor vision and frequently blindness. These injuries affect the quality of life of the patients and their families and have a strong negative impact on society. The reported incidence of ocular chemical injuries in the UK ranges from 7% to 10% among all ocular traumas. The annual incidence of chemical injuries in the north-eastern UK is 5.6 cases per 100,000 population, higher than the overall UK rate of 0.02 per 100,000 population per annum. The frequency of thermal cornea burns in the UK peaks during and after the fireworks seasons (Bonfire Night, New Year Eve, etc.). Chemical burns of the cornea have doubled in numbers over the last two years due to "acid attacks" as has been recently reported by the Home Office.Assessment and diagnosis of cornea damage involves inspection of microscopic photographs of the cornea at various depths and relies on the identification of the shapes and arrangements of the cornea cells, especially in its epithelial layer. Distinctions between healthy and strongly damaged cornea are often easily discernible, but monitoring of the post-operative recovery involves more subtle, gradual changes that are difficult to identify without dedicated quantitative analysis. Meanwhile, such changes are critical to discover and characterise in order to assess the success of the medical treatments and to inform their strategy.In this project, a practising ophthalmologist and cell biologist will combine their effort with astrophysicists and applied mathematicians to develop quantitative, computer-aided methods of analysis of microscopic cornea photographs in order to facilitate diagnostics and monitoring of the cornea damage.Image analysis is at the heart of astronomy and, fundamentally, analyses of telescopic and microscopic images have much in common. Building upon advanced morphological and topological methods of statistical image analysis developed in the current STFC grant in application to to astronomical images, we propose to develop tools for quantitative clinical diagnostics of cornea cell damage based on approximately 100,000 in vivo confocal microscopic cornea images of healthy and damaged eyes obtained from patients of the Royal Victoria Infirmary (NHS, Newcastle upon Tyne). The aim of this project is to explore and apply novel, advanced mathematical methods of image analysis to identify and quantify the nature and degree of cornea damage and monitor its post-operative recovery, both general and patient-specific. Our ambition is to develop, eventually, a software package that could be used by ophthalmologists in their day-to-day clinical work in order to facilitate a speedy, objective and reliable diagnostics, damage assessment, monitoring progression of disease and response to surgical intervention, and to provide a suitably accurate and reproducible diagnostic and monitoring methods to assist in the day-to-day medical decision making.

角膜是眼睛的透明前部，覆盖虹膜、瞳孔和前房。透明的角膜对于良好的视力是必不可少的。眼睛的化学和热烧伤是一种严重的伤害形式，可能会给患者带来灾难性的长期后果，包括慢性眼睛疼痛、视力低下和经常失明。这些伤害影响了患者及其家属的生活质量，对社会产生了强烈的负面影响。据报道，在英国，眼部化学损伤的发生率在所有眼外伤中从7%到10%不等。在英国东北部，化学损伤的年发病率为每10万人口5.6例，高于英国每年每10万人口0.02例的总体发病率。在英国，热性角膜灼伤的频率在烟花季节(篝火之夜、除夕等)期间和之后达到顶峰。据英国内政部最近报道，在过去的两年里，由于酸攻击，角膜化学烧伤的数量翻了一番。评估和诊断角膜损伤需要检查不同深度的角膜显微照片，并依赖于识别角膜细胞的形状和排列，特别是在其上皮层。健康和严重受损的角膜之间的区别往往很容易辨别，但术后恢复的监测涉及更微妙、更渐进的变化，如果没有专门的定量分析，就很难识别这些变化。与此同时，这些变化对于发现和描述这些变化是至关重要的，以便评估医疗治疗的成功并为他们的战略提供依据。在这个项目中，一名执业的眼科医生和细胞生物学家将与天体物理学家和应用数学家合作，开发计算机辅助的定量角膜照片分析方法，以便于诊断和监测角膜损伤。图像分析是天文学的核心，从根本上说，望远镜图像和显微图像的分析有许多共同之处。基于当前STFC拨款中开发的用于天文图像的先进的统计图像分析的形态学和拓扑学方法，我们建议开发用于角膜细胞损伤的定量临床诊断工具，该工具基于从皇家维多利亚医院(NHS，泰恩河畔纽卡斯尔)的患者获得的大约100,000张健康和受损眼睛的活体共焦显微镜角膜图像。该项目的目的是探索和应用新的、先进的图像分析数学方法来识别和量化角膜损伤的性质和程度，并监测其术后恢复情况，包括一般性的和针对患者的。我们的目标是最终开发一个可供眼科医生在日常临床工作中使用的软件包，以促进快速、客观和可靠的诊断、损害评估、监测疾病进展和手术干预的反应，并提供适当准确和可重复的诊断和监测方法，以帮助日常医疗决策。