Glaucoma Detection Using Optical Coherence Tomography Images: A Systematic Review of Clinical and Automated Studies

Abstract

Glaucoma is a progressive and degenerative optic neuropathy that causes severe visual impairment or even blindness if left untreated. Glaucoma is majorly caused due to stress which increases intraocular pressure that leads towards optic nerve degeneration. The degenerative optic nerve then causes irreversible loss of peripheral vision which may lead to complete blindness. Although the progression of glaucoma can harshly affect the vision, it can be prevented if diagnosed in the early stages. However, optical coherence tomography (OCT) imagery is widely used by ophthalmologist for early glaucoma diagnosis and progression tracking. Owing to this objective screening capacity of the OCT imagery, many researchers have used it as an examination procedure to verify their clinical studies or to train their autonomous systems for mass-screening glaucomatous pathologies. In this paper, we present a systematic review of the recent studies that have proposed various solutions to mitigate glaucomatous progression using OCT imagery. Initially, we have presented a review of clinical studies that looked at glaucomatous diseases in OCT images.Furthermore, this paper presents a detailed survey of the state-of-the-art techniques for glaucoma detection and grading. In future directions, ganglion cell layer as well as macular analysis and its automation will improve the diagnostic power of OCT for the early glaucoma detection and especially monitoring its progression.

Keywords: Ganglion cell layer (GCL), Glaucoma, Macula, Optic never head (ONH), Optical coherence tomography (OCT), Retinal never fiber layer (RNFL), Visual field defects