Fractal dimension based corneal fungal infection diagnosis

Madhusudhanan Balasubramanian; A. Louise Perkins; Roger W. Beuerman; S. Sitharama Iyengar

doi:10.1117/12.680041

24 August 2006 Fractal dimension based corneal fungal infection diagnosis

Madhusudhanan Balasubramanian, A. Louise Perkins, Roger W. Beuerman, S. Sitharama Iyengar

Proceedings Volume 6312, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXIX; 631214 (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.680041
Event: SPIE Optics + Photonics, 2006, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

We present a fractal measure based pattern classification algorithm for automatic feature extraction and identification of fungus associated with an infection of the cornea of the eye. A white-light confocal microscope image of suspected fungus exhibited locally linear and branching structures. The pixel intensity variation across the width of a fungal element was gaussian. Linear features were extracted using a set of 2D directional matched gaussian-filters. Portions of fungus profiles that were not in the same focal plane appeared relatively blurred. We use gaussian filters of standard deviation slightly larger than the width of a fungus to reduce discontinuities. Cell nuclei of cornea and nerves also exhibited locally linear structure. Cell nuclei were excluded by their relatively shorter lengths. Nerves in the cornea exhibited less branching compared with the fungus. Fractal dimensions of the locally linear features were computed using a box-counting method. A set of corneal images with fungal infection was used to generate class-conditional fractal measure distributions of fungus and nerves. The a priori class-conditional densities were built using an adaptive-mixtures method to reflect the true nature of the feature distributions and improve the classification accuracy. A maximum-likelihood classifier was used to classify the linear features extracted from test corneal images as 'normal' or 'with fungal infiltrates', using the a priori fractal measure distributions. We demonstrate the algorithm on the corneal images with culture-positive fungal infiltrates. The algorithm is fully automatic and will help diagnose fungal keratitis by generating a diagnostic mask of locations of the fungal infiltrates.

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Madhusudhanan Balasubramanian, A. Louise Perkins, Roger W. Beuerman, and S. Sitharama Iyengar "Fractal dimension based corneal fungal infection diagnosis", Proc. SPIE 6312, Applications of Digital Image Processing XXIX, 631214 (24 August 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.680041

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KEYWORDS

Fractal analysis

Confocal microscopy

Fungi

Cornea

Image filtering

Microscopes

Feature extraction

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