Imaging system for retinal change evaluation

Using instruments like fundus cameras, ophthalmologists can closely examine the eye from its outer surface to the back of the retina for clues that may aid in the diagnosis and treatment of a patient. In particular, retinal vessel changes are common findings in patients suffering from many acute and chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. Morphological evaluations of the fundus oculi represent a clinical approach that correlates well with other methods for the assessment of hypertensive target organ damage. A qualitative analysis, i.e. visual analysis, of the retinal lesions is usually performed and this implies severe limitations both in the classification of the different degrees of the pathology and in the follow-up of the disease. In fact, visual analysis is often inaccurate suffering from high inter- and intra-observer variability and poor reproducibility. A diagnostic system based on a quantitative analysis of the retinal changes could overcome these problems, and this paper concentrates on the results of a computerised approach to the automatic extraction of numerical indexes describing morphological details of the fundus oculi.