Diagnosis via retinal inspection improved

[frodo]

Diagnosis of multiple sclerosis using multifocal erg data feature fusion

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 3521001068

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to implement a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for multiple sclerosis (MS) based on analysing the outer retina as assessed by multifocal electroretinograms (mfERGs).

MfERG recordings taken with the RETI‐port/scan 21 (Roland Consult) device from 15 eyes of patients diagnosed with incipient relapsing-remitting MS and without prior optic neuritis, and from 6 eyes of control subjects, are selected.

The mfERG recordings are grouped (whole macular visual field, five rings, and four quadrants). For each group, the correlation with a normative database of adaptively filtered signals, based on empirical model decomposition (EMD) and three features from the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) domain, are obtained.

Of the initial 40 features, the 4 most relevant are selected in two stages: a) using a filter method and b) using a wrapper-feature selection method. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used as a classifier. With the optimal CAD configuration, a Matthews correlation coefficient value of 0.89 (accuracy = 0.95, specificity = 1.0 and sensitivity = 0.93) is obtained.

This study identified an outer retina dysfunction in patients with recent MS by analysing the outer retina responses in the mfERG and employing an SVM as a classifier.

In conclusion, a promising new electrophysiological-biomarker method based on feature fusion for MS diagnosis was identified.