Volumetric Choroidal Segmentation Using Sequential Deep Learning Approach in High Myopia Subjects

Many ocular diseases are associated with choroidal changes. Therefore, it is crucial to be able to segment the choroid to study its properties. Previous methods for choroidal segmentation have focused on single cross-sectional scans. Volumetric choroidal segmentation has yet to be widely reported. In this paper, we propose a sequential segmentation approach using a variation of U-Net with a bidirectional C-LSTM(Convolutional Long Short Term Memory) module in the bottleneck region. The model is evaluated on volumetric scans from 40 high myopia subjects, obtained using SS-OCT(Swept Source Optical Coherence Tomography). A comparison with other U-Net-based variants is also presented. The results demonstrate that volumetric segmentation of the choroid can be achieved with an accuracy of IoU(Intersection over Union) 0.92.Clinical relevance - This deep learning approach can automatically segment the choroidal volume, which can enable better evaluation and monitoring at ocular diseases.