Segmentation of the Surfaces of the Retinal Layer from OCT Images

We have developed a method for the automated segmentation of the internal limiting membrane and the pigment epithelium in 3-D OCT retinal images. Each surface was found as a minimum s-t cut from a geometric graph constructed from edge/regional information and a priori-determined surface constraints. Our approach was tested on 18 3-D data sets (9 from patients with normal optic discs and 9 from patients with papilledema) obtained using a Stratus OCT-3 scanner. Qualitative analysis of surface detection correctness indicates that our method consistently found the correct surfaces and outperformed the proprietary algorithm used in the Stratus OCT-3 scanner. For example, for the internal limiting membrane, 4% of the 2-D scans had minor failures with no major failures using our approach, but 19% of the 2-D scans using the Stratus OCT-3 scanner had minor or complete failures.