Effective Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using BM3D-Based Preprocessing of the Training Data Including Both Healthy and Pathological Cases

Retinal diseases are significant cause of visual impairment globally. In the worst case they may lead to severe vision loss or blindness. Accurate diagnosis is a key factor in the right treatment planning that can stop or slow the disease. The examination that can aid in the right diagnosis is Optic...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Piotr Bogacki, Andrzej Dziech
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2023-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10160015/
_version_ 1797787402105782272
author Piotr Bogacki
Andrzej Dziech
author_facet Piotr Bogacki
Andrzej Dziech
author_sort Piotr Bogacki
collection DOAJ
description Retinal diseases are significant cause of visual impairment globally. In the worst case they may lead to severe vision loss or blindness. Accurate diagnosis is a key factor in the right treatment planning that can stop or slow the disease. The examination that can aid in the right diagnosis is Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). OCT scans are susceptible to various noise effects which deteriorate their quality and as a result may impede the analysis of their content. In this paper, we propose a novel and effective method for OCT image denoising using a deep learning model trained on pairs of noisy and clean scans obtained by BM3D filtering. A comprehensive dataset of 21926 OCT scans, collected from 869 patients (1639 eyes), covering both healthy and pathological cases, was used for training and testing of the proposed scheme. The method was validated taking into account quantitative metrics concerning image quality. In addition, the proposed denoising scheme was evaluated by analyzing the impact of applying it in the eye disease classification based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) where we obtained the improvement of around 1–3 pp (percentage point). A separate dataset of 25697 scans collected from 1910 patients (2953 eyes) was used for this purpose. The conducted experiments have proved that the method can be applied as a preprocessing step in order to provide better disease classification results and can be useful in other OCT image analysis tasks. The proposed solution is much faster and perform better than the classical BM3D filter (over ninetyfold speed-up) and other related methods, especially when a big set of images needs to be processed at once. Furthermore, the use of the diverse dataset show the benefit over methods which are based on using only healthy scans for the training of the neural network.
first_indexed 2024-03-13T01:21:26Z
format Article
id doaj.art-737a69c2d7c3483a9b3e47a57e32eb31
institution Directory Open Access Journal
issn 2169-3536
language English
last_indexed 2024-03-13T01:21:26Z
publishDate 2023-01-01
publisher IEEE
record_format Article
series IEEE Access
spelling doaj.art-737a69c2d7c3483a9b3e47a57e32eb312023-07-04T23:00:42ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362023-01-0111653956540610.1109/ACCESS.2023.328916210160015Effective Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using BM3D-Based Preprocessing of the Training Data Including Both Healthy and Pathological CasesPiotr Bogacki0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5470-7189Andrzej Dziech1Faculty of Computer Science, Electronics and Telecommunications, Institute of Telecommunications, AGH University of Science and Technology, Kraków, PolandFaculty of Computer Science, Electronics and Telecommunications, Institute of Telecommunications, AGH University of Science and Technology, Kraków, PolandRetinal diseases are significant cause of visual impairment globally. In the worst case they may lead to severe vision loss or blindness. Accurate diagnosis is a key factor in the right treatment planning that can stop or slow the disease. The examination that can aid in the right diagnosis is Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). OCT scans are susceptible to various noise effects which deteriorate their quality and as a result may impede the analysis of their content. In this paper, we propose a novel and effective method for OCT image denoising using a deep learning model trained on pairs of noisy and clean scans obtained by BM3D filtering. A comprehensive dataset of 21926 OCT scans, collected from 869 patients (1639 eyes), covering both healthy and pathological cases, was used for training and testing of the proposed scheme. The method was validated taking into account quantitative metrics concerning image quality. In addition, the proposed denoising scheme was evaluated by analyzing the impact of applying it in the eye disease classification based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) where we obtained the improvement of around 1–3 pp (percentage point). A separate dataset of 25697 scans collected from 1910 patients (2953 eyes) was used for this purpose. The conducted experiments have proved that the method can be applied as a preprocessing step in order to provide better disease classification results and can be useful in other OCT image analysis tasks. The proposed solution is much faster and perform better than the classical BM3D filter (over ninetyfold speed-up) and other related methods, especially when a big set of images needs to be processed at once. Furthermore, the use of the diverse dataset show the benefit over methods which are based on using only healthy scans for the training of the neural network.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10160015/Optical coherence tomographyimage denoisingmedical applicationsspeckle noise removal
spellingShingle Piotr Bogacki
Andrzej Dziech
Effective Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using BM3D-Based Preprocessing of the Training Data Including Both Healthy and Pathological Cases
IEEE Access
Optical coherence tomography
image denoising
medical applications
speckle noise removal
title Effective Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using BM3D-Based Preprocessing of the Training Data Including Both Healthy and Pathological Cases
title_full Effective Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using BM3D-Based Preprocessing of the Training Data Including Both Healthy and Pathological Cases
title_fullStr Effective Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using BM3D-Based Preprocessing of the Training Data Including Both Healthy and Pathological Cases
title_full_unstemmed Effective Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using BM3D-Based Preprocessing of the Training Data Including Both Healthy and Pathological Cases
title_short Effective Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images Using BM3D-Based Preprocessing of the Training Data Including Both Healthy and Pathological Cases
title_sort effective deep learning approach to denoise optical coherence tomography images using bm3d based preprocessing of the training data including both healthy and pathological cases
topic Optical coherence tomography
image denoising
medical applications
speckle noise removal
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10160015/
work_keys_str_mv AT piotrbogacki effectivedeeplearningapproachtodenoiseopticalcoherencetomographyimagesusingbm3dbasedpreprocessingofthetrainingdataincludingbothhealthyandpathologicalcases
AT andrzejdziech effectivedeeplearningapproachtodenoiseopticalcoherencetomographyimagesusingbm3dbasedpreprocessingofthetrainingdataincludingbothhealthyandpathologicalcases