Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Apr 22, 2024)
Date Submitted: Mar 17, 2023
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Repeatability and Reproducibility of Automated Quantitative Conjunctival Hyperemia Analysis Software
ABSTRACT
Background:
The degree of conjunctival hyperemia reflects the severity of various ocular disease. Most of clinical grading systems rely on individual physicians and it is difficult to compare between clinical examinations. We developed automated grading software to objectively assess conjunctival hyperemia.
Objective:
To assess the repeatability and reproducibility of newly developed automated quantitative conjunctival hyperemia analysis software.
Methods:
Eighty images of twenty glaucoma patients who were using at least one anti-glaucoma medication and complained of conjunctival hyperemia were collected. All patients’ severity of conjunctival hyperemia was evaluated by newly developed automated conjunctival hyperemia grading software into 4 levels: blood vessel, strong red area, weak red area and non-red area. Automatic registration was applied for improving the software repeatability and reproducibility.
Results:
Spearman correlation coefficient values(rs) values of 0.884, 0.982 and 0.932 for blood vessel area, strong red area and weak red area of two measurements of the same image, respectively. Spearman correlation coefficient (rs) values of 0.988, 0.992 and 0.995 for blood vessel area, strong red area and weak red area of two images of the same eye, respectively. The clinical grading had the best correlation with the summation of blood vessel and strong red area, following with strong red area.
Conclusions:
The proposed conjunctival hyperemia analysis software provides an automatically quantitative objective assessment of conjunctival hyperemia with excellent repeatability and reproducibility including excellent correlation with clinical grading by ophthalmologists. This algorithm including the automatic region of interest (ROI) registration between two images system give precise results in comparing the conjunctival hyperemic change in clinical practice.
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