Robust Methodology for Fractal Analysis of the Retinal Vasculature

We have developed a robust method to perform retinal vascular fractal analysis from digital retina images. The technique preprocesses the green channel retina images with Gabor wavelet transforms to enhance the retinal images. Fourier Fractal dimension is computed on these preprocessed images and does not require any segmentation of the vessels. This novel technique requires human input only at a single step; the allocation of the optic disk center. We have tested this technique on 380 retina images from healthy individuals aged 50+ years, randomly selected from the Blue Mountains Eye Study population. To assess its reliability in assessing retinal vascular fractals from different allocation of optic center, we performed pair-wise Pearson correlation between the fractal dimension estimates with 100 simulated region of interest for each of the 380 images. There was Gaussian distribution variation in the optic center allocation in each simulation. The resulting mean correlation coefficient (standard deviation) was 0.93 (0.005). The repeatability of this method was found to be better than the earlier box-counting method. Using this method to assess retinal vascular fractals, we have also confirmed a reduction in the retinal vasculature complexity with aging, consistent with observations from other human organ systems.