On the Methods for Estimating the Corneoscleral Limbus.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to develop computational methods for estimating limbus position based on the measurements of three-dimensional (3-D) corneoscleral topography and ascertain whether corneoscleral limbus routinely estimated from the frontal image corresponds to that derived from topographical information. METHODS: Two new computational methods for estimating the limbus position are proposed: One based on approximating the raw anterior eye height data by series of Zernike polynomials and one that combines the 3-D corneoscleral topography with the frontal grayscale image acquired with the digital camera in-built in the profilometer. The proposed methods are contrasted against a previously described image-only-based procedure and to a technique of manual image annotation. RESULTS: The estimates of corneoscleral limbus radius were characterized with a high precision. The group average (mean ± standard deviation) of the maximum difference between estimates derived from all considered methods was 0.27 ± 0.14 mm and reached up to 0.55 mm. The four estimating methods lead to statistically significant differences (nonparametric ANOVA (the Analysis of Variance) test, p 0.05). CONCLUSION: Precise topographical limbus demarcation is possible either from the frontal digital images of the eye or from the 3-D topographical information of corneoscleral region. However, the results demonstrated that the corneoscleral limbus estimated from the anterior eye topography does not always correspond to that obtained through image-only based techniques. SIGNIFICANCE: The experimental findings have shown that 3-D topography of anterior eye, in the absence of a gold standard, has the potential to become a new computational methodology for estimating the corneoscleral limbus.