Predicting Post-Therapeutic Visual Acuity and OCT Images in Patients With Central Serous Chorioretinopathy by Artificial Intelligence

Fabao Xu; Cheng Wan; Lanqin Zhao; Shaopeng Liu; Jiaming Hong; Yifan Xiang; Qijing You; Lijun Zhou; Zhongwen Li; Songjian Gong; Yi Zhu; Chuan Chen; Li Zhang; Yajun Gong; Longhui Li; Cong Li; Xiayin Zhang; Chong Guo; Kunbei Lai; Chuangxin Huang; Daniel Ting; Haotian Lin; Chenjin Jin

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2021.649221

Predicting Post-Therapeutic Visual Acuity and OCT Images in Patients With Central Serous Chorioretinopathy by Artificial Intelligence

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2021 Nov 23:9:649221. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2021.649221. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Fabao Xu¹, Cheng Wan², Lanqin Zhao¹, Shaopeng Liu³, Jiaming Hong⁴, Yifan Xiang¹, Qijing You², Lijun Zhou¹, Zhongwen Li¹, Songjian Gong⁵, Yi Zhu⁶, Chuan Chen⁶, Li Zhang^{1

7}, Yajun Gong¹, Longhui Li¹, Cong Li¹, Xiayin Zhang¹, Chong Guo¹, Kunbei Lai¹, Chuangxin Huang¹, Daniel Ting⁸, Haotian Lin^{1

9}, Chenjin Jin¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
² College of Electronic Information Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China.
³ School of Computer Science, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
⁴ School of Medical Information Engineering, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China.
⁵ Xiamen Eye Center, Affiliated with Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
⁶ Department of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology, University of Miami Miller School, Miami, FL, United States.
⁷ Department of Ophthalmology, The Central Hospital of Wuhan, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
⁸ Singapore National Eye Center, Department of Ophthalmology, Singapore, Singapore.
⁹ Center of Precision Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

To predict visual acuity (VA) and post-therapeutic optical coherence tomography (OCT) images 1, 3, and 6 months after laser treatment in patients with central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) by artificial intelligence (AI). Real-world clinical and imaging data were collected at Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center (ZOC) and Xiamen Eye Center (XEC). The data obtained from ZOC (416 eyes of 401 patients) were used as the training set; the data obtained from XEC (64 eyes of 60 patients) were used as the test set. Six different machine learning algorithms and a blending algorithm were used to predict VA, and a pix2pixHD method was adopted to predict post-therapeutic OCT images in patients after laser treatment. The data for VA predictions included clinical features obtained from electronic medical records (20 features) and measured features obtained from fundus fluorescein angiography, indocyanine green angiography, and OCT (145 features). The data for OCT predictions included 480 pairs of pre- and post-therapeutic OCT images. The VA and OCT images predicted by AI were compared with the ground truth. In the VA predictions of XEC dataset, the mean absolute errors (MAEs) were 0.074-0.098 logMAR (within four to five letters), and the root mean square errors were 0.096-0.127 logMAR (within five to seven letters) for the 1-, 3-, and 6-month predictions, respectively; in the post-therapeutic OCT predictions, only about 5.15% (5 of 97) of synthetic OCT images could be accurately identified as synthetic images. The MAEs of central macular thickness of synthetic OCT images were 30.15 ± 13.28 μm and 22.46 ± 9.71 μm for the 1- and 3-month predictions, respectively. This is the first study to apply AI to predict VA and post-therapeutic OCT of patients with CSC. This work establishes a reliable method of predicting prognosis 6 months in advance; the application of AI has the potential to help reduce patient anxiety and serve as a reference for ophthalmologists when choosing optimal laser treatments.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; central serous chorioretinopathy; machine learning; optical coherence tomography; visual acuity.