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Open Access since 1 January 2013

© The Author(s)

This is an Open Access article published by World Scientific Publishing Company. It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-BY) License. Further distribution of this work is permitted, provided the original work is properly cited.

A computer-based image analysis for tear ferning featuring

Ali S. Saad

Department of Biomedical Technology, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud University, P. O. Box 10219, Riyadh 11433, Saudi Arabia

Gamal A. El-Hiti

Cornea Research Chair (CRC), Department of Optometry, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11433, Saudi Arabia

Ali M. Masmali

Cornea Research Chair (CRC), Department of Optometry, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11433, Saudi Arabia

Received: 16 September 2014
Accepted: 14 October 2014
Published: 14 November 2014

The present work focuses on the development of a novel computer-based approach for tear ferning (TF) featuring. The original TF images of the recently developed five-point grading scale have been used to assign a grade for any TF image automatically. A vector characteristic (VC) representing each grade was built using the reference images. A weighted combination between features selected from textures analysis using gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), power spectrum (PS) analysis and linear specificity of the image were used to build the VC of each grade. A total of 14 features from texture analysis were used. PS at different frequency points and number of line segments in each image were also used. Five features from GLCM have shown significant differences between the recently developed grading scale images which are: angular second moment at 0° and 45°, contrast, and correlation at 0° and 45° these five features were all included in the characteristic vector. Three specific power frequencies were used in the VC because of the discrimination power. Number of line segments was also chosen because of dissimilarities between images. A VC for each grade of TF reference images was constructed and was found to be significantly different from each other's. This is a basic and fundamental step toward an automatic grading for computer-based diagnosis for dry eye.

Keywords: Objective grading; tear ferning new grading scale; texture analysis; image processing; PS
Cited by (2):
. (2016) Image enhancement via MMSE estimation of Gaussian scale mixture with Maxwell density in AWGN. Journal of Innovative Optical Health Sciences 09:02. Online publication date: 1-Mar-2016. [Abstract | PDF (510 KB) | PDF Plus (330 KB)]
, , , , , . (2016) Assessment of Tear Film Quality among Smokers Using Tear Ferning Patterns. Journal of Ophthalmology 2016, 1-5. Online publication date: 1-Jan-2016. [Crossref]