Glaucoma, basically, is a group
of ocular disorders with multi-factorial etiology united by a clinically
characteristic intraocular pressure-associated optic neuropathy. It is normally
associated with the increased fluid pressure in the eye. It causes damage to your eye's optic nerve,
gets worse over time and can cause complete blindness in later stages and has
no true cure.
Yet, early diagnosis of this
disease can offer few options to slow down the progress of this disease and
keep our eyes safe for a longer period. But, generally, in majority of cases
the symptoms are detected in a much later stage where the effective therapy
fails to do any good.
Using
images of the optic disc in the eye, the
cup-to-disc
ratio (CDR) can be calculated by dividing
the
vertical cup diameter (VCD) by the vertical disc diameter (VDD).
Currently, intraocular pressure
sensing is the most popular technique used for the detection of Glaucoma but
this technique is also not effective in screening the masses before any
symptoms are reported. Scientists at A*STAR Institute for Infocomm
Research in Singapore have formulated a new method which focuses on the high
resolution imaging of the optic disk (optic nerve head) to detect the
elongation of the optic cup, which is an area in the centre of the disk. This
elongation usually happens even before any noticeable symptoms appear in
patients suffering from early stages of Glaucoma. The system involves automatic
superpixel segmentation of the image into tiny quadrants and detection of the
area of the cup and the disk. The ratio between the vertical heights of the two
turns out to correlate pretty well with confirmed glaucoma diagnoses. Most
importantly, this system is cheaper in comparison to the present one and
facilitates the screening of the entire populations and thus, helps lot more
people to live with healthy vision for longer time.
