Includes References and Index

Volumetric 3D optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging of the eye has
revolutionized diagnosis and management of patients with ophthalmic diseases.
OCT was introduced in the 1980s with first biomedical OCT imaging applications
appearing in the 1990s. The first broadly available ophthalmic OCT system—Zeiss
Stratus—was introduced in 2002 and offered 2D “depth” imaging of the retina. As
the technology developed, true 3D volumetric retinal scanners began to appear
around 2008 with a number of manufacturers offering ophthalmic 3D-OCT imaging
devices. Over the years, many variants of retinal OCT were introduced, starting
with primarily 2D time-domain OCT technology capable of acquiring 400 axial
scans (A-scans) per second, followed by spectral-domain OCT offering 50 times
faster image acquisition with 27,000 A-scans/s, swept-source OCT (100,000
A-scans/s), Doppler OCT, adaptive-optics OCT, etc. Soon after, clinical utilization
of the OCT for imaging the retinal layers and the optic nerve head became common
and other ophthalmic applications emerged including OCT imaging of the choroid,
optic disk, retinal vasculature, and other parts of the eye anatomy. OCT is
increasingly used to image vascular flow, as well as eye function including
anatomy-derived visual function. Consequently, OCT imaging is employed for
diagnostic and treatment-guidance purposes in many diseases including age-related
macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema, macular hole, papilledema, retinal
vein occlusion, glaucoma, intraretinal tumors, etc.
Quantitative ophthalmic OCT image analysis has trailed the introduction of
retinal OCT scanners with only a minimal delay. The experience with volumetric
biomedical image analysis, which was developed in radiologic, cardiologic, and/or
neuroscience applications over several decades, and the associated expertise of
medical imaging researchers allowed rapid translation of this knowledge to ophthalmic OCT image analysis. The transition from primarily 2D retinal imaging
using fundus photography, fluorescein angiography, and other 2D approaches that
were mostly qualitative in clinical care to quantitative 3D analyses was arguably the
fastest among all areas of clinical and translational medicine. This book offers a timely overview of this very area of the ophthalmic
imaging—OCT image acquisition, formation, quantitative OCT image analysis, and
clinical applications. The book, edited by Xinjian Chen, Fei Shi, and Haoyu Chen,
and entitled Retinal Optical Coherence Tomography Image Analysis, gives a
comprehensive summary of the state of the art in 2018. The book is logically
divided into 13 chapters, written by teams of international experts—medical
imaging researchers, medical image analysis scholars, and clinically active research
physicians. As a result, the book offers an excellent insight in translational applications of ophthalmic OCT imaging, starting with introductory aspects of imaging
physics and covering many areas of analysis with a special focus on their relevance
for retinal disease diagnosis, treatment, and outcome prediction.
The first chapter motivates the entire book and provides an introductory overview
of clinical applications of OCT retinal imaging. The next group of chapters—Chaps.
2–4—give fundamentals of OCT imaging physics and OCT image acquisition,
describe methods of obtaining high-quality OCT image data via denoising and
enhancement, and provide a forward-looking synopsis of OCT image formation
from sparse representations. The third and largest group of chapters—Chaps. 5–12—
are devoted to quantitative OCT image analysis. It focuses on image segmentation,
quantitative description of retinal morphology, diagnostic abilities of OCT for various ophthalmic diseases, and diagnostic utilization of retinal-layer-specific optical
intensities. Separate chapters provide information about OCT-based analysis of the
optic nerve head in glaucoma and methods for the analysis of the choroid. Three
additional chapters deal with the difficult problems of retinal layer segmentation in
the presence of morphology/topology-modifying diseases—fluid formation in the
outer and inner retina in pigment epithelial detachment, quantification of the external
limiting membrane integrity, and/or assessment of geographic atrophy and drusen.
The entire family of detection and quantification of SEADs—symptomatic
exudate-associated derangements—characteristically occurring in age-related macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema, and other retinal diseases is also covered.
The last Chap. 13 outlines the predictive capabilities of OCT imaging for therapy
guidance and outcome prediction from temporal OCT image sequences—while
based on only a very small sample of patients, it provides a futuristic forward-looking
peek in the envisioned capabilities of clinical OCT usage of longitudinal patient data.
The book is a welcome addition to the field of quantitative ophthalmic imaging.
Its focus on and consistent treatment of volumetric retinal images from 3D retinal
optical coherence tomography, its stress of translational aspects of these approaches, and the demonstrated advances obtained by direct shoulder-to-shoulder collaborations of medical imaging scholars, engineers, physicists, and physicians are
an unquestionable strength of this interdisciplinary book. It will undoubtedly be
well received by graduate and post-graduate students, ophthalmic imaging
researchers, OCT imaging practitioners, and ophthalmic physicians alike.