Assessment of the repeatability in an automatic methodology for hyperemia grading in the bulbar conjunctiva

When the vessels of the bulbar conjunctiva get congested with blood, a characteristic red hue appears in the area. This symptom is known as hyperemia, and can be an early indicator of certain pathologies. Therefore, a prompt diagnosis is desirable in order to minimize both medical and economic repercussions. A fully automatic methodology for hyperemia grading in the bulbar conjunctiva was developed, by means of image processing and machine learning techniques. As there is a wide range of illumination, contrast, and focus issues in the images that specialists use to perform the grading, a repeatability analysis is necessary. Thus, the validation of each step of the methodology was performed, analyzing how variations in the images are translated to the results, and comparing them to the optometrist's measurements. Our results prove the robustness of our methodology to various conditions. Moreover, the differences in the automatic outputs are similar to the optometrist's ones.

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