A corneal endothelium cell analyzer for slit lamps

Author

Ventura, Liliane ; Caetano, Cesar A C ; Sousa, Sidney J F ; Isaac, Flávio ; Chiaradia, Caio ; Lotufo, Roberto A.

Author_Institution

Laboratorio de Fisica Oftalmica, FMRP-USP, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Volume

21

Issue

6

fYear

2002

Firstpage

92

Lastpage

98

Abstract

An optical system that attaches to a slit lamp is an alternative to the cost and limitations of specular microscopes. In order to overcome the limitations of subjective assessment of all the endothelial layers, the difficulties of manipulation, high cost, and analysis of several parts of the cornea, we have developed a system that can be attached to the slit lamp (290× nominal magnification of the image of the cells displayed on a PC monitor and a dedicated software for image treating and cells counting). Results are in good agreement with measurements done in specular microscopes (correlation coefficient is 0.98081) and the automatic counting method is also in good agreement with the interactive counting method (correlation coefficient is 0.95798).

Keywords

biomedical equipment; biomedical optical imaging; cellular biophysics; eye; medical image processing; microcomputer applications; optical microscopy; PC monitor; automatic counting method; corneal endothelium cell analyzer; correlation coefficient; dedicated software; donated corneas evaluation; effective optical method; interactive counting method; manipulation difficulties; nominal magnification; optical system; slit lamps; specular microscopes; subjective assessment limitations; Cornea; Costs; Displays; Focusing; Humans; Image analysis; Lamps; Monitoring; Optical microscopy; Optical reflection; Cell Count; Endothelium, Corneal; Equipment Design; Humans; Image Enhancement; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Microscopy, Video; Optics; Quality Control; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Software; User-Computer Interface;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0739-5175

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MEMB.2002.1175144

Filename

1175144