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ToFi-ML: Retinal Image Screening with Topological Machine Learning

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Medical Image Understanding and Analysis (MIUA 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14122))

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Abstract

The analysis of fundus images for the early screening of eye diseases is of great clinical importance. Traditional methods for such analysis are time-consuming and expensive as it requires a trained clinician. Therefore, the need for a comprehensive and automated method of retinal image screening to diagnose and grade retinal diseases has long been recognized. In the past decade, with the substantial developments in computer vision and deep learning, machine learning methods became highly effective in this field as clinical-decision support methods. However, most of these algorithms face challenges like computational feasibility, reliability, and interpretability.

In this paper, we develop a novel approach to this crucial task in retinal image screening. By employing topological data analysis tools, for the most common retinal diseases, i.e., Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), Glaucoma, and Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), we observe different types of topological patterns between normal and abnormal classes. These patterns enable us to produce topological fingerprints of fundus images, and we use them as feature vectors with standard ML methods. Our computationally efficient model ToFi-ML outperforms or gives highly competitive accuracy results with state-of-the-art deep learning methods. Furthermore, our topological fingerprints are both explainable and interpretable, and can easily be integrated with future early-screening ML models.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/FaisalAhmed77/Topo-Ret.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by National Science Foundation (Grant # DMS-2202584) and by Simons Foundation (Grant # 579977).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, 75080, USA

    Faisal Ahmed & Baris Coskunuzer

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  1. Faisal Ahmed
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  2. Baris Coskunuzer
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Correspondence to Baris Coskunuzer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Gordon Waiter

  2. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Tryphon Lambrou

  3. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Georgios Leontidis

  4. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Nir Oren

  5. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Teresa Morris

  6. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Sharon Gordon

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Ahmed, F., Coskunuzer, B. (2024). ToFi-ML: Retinal Image Screening with Topological Machine Learning. In: Waiter, G., Lambrou, T., Leontidis, G., Oren, N., Morris, T., Gordon, S. (eds) Medical Image Understanding and Analysis. MIUA 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14122. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48593-0_21

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