Enhancing the Automated Detection of Implantable Collamer Lens Vault Using Generative Adversarial Networks and Synthetic Data on Optical Coherence Tomography

Purpose:

To investigate the efficacy of incorporating Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) and synthetic images in enhancing the performance of a convolutional neural network (CNN) for automated estimation of Implantable Collamer Lens (ICL) vault using anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT).

Methods:

This study was a retrospective evaluation using synthetic data and real patient images in a deep learning framework. Synthetic ICL AS-OCT scans were generated using GANs and a secondary image editing algorithm, creating approximately 100,000 synthetic images. These were used alongside real patient scans to train a CNN for estimating ICL vault distance. The model's performance was evaluated using statistical metrics such as mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), mean absolute error (MAE), root mean squared error (RMSE), and coefficient of determination (R²) for the estimation of ICL vault distance.

Results:

The study analyzed 4,557 AS-OCT B-scans from 138 eyes of 103 patients for training. An independent, retrospectively collected dataset of 2,454 AS-OCT images from 88 eyes of 56 patients, used prospectively for evaluation, served as the test set. When trained solely on real images, the CNN achieved a MAPE of 15.31%, MAE of 44.68 µm, and RMSE of 63.3 µm. However, with the inclusion of GAN-generated and algorithmically edited synthetic images, the performance significantly improved, achieving a MAPE of 8.09%, MAE of 24.83 µm, and RMSE of 32.26 µm. The R² value was +0.98, indicating a strong positive correlation between actual and predicted ICL vault distances (P < .01). No statistically significant difference was observed between measured and predicted vault values (P = .58).

Conclusions:

The integration of GAN-generated and edited synthetic images substantially enhanced ICL vault estimation, demonstrating the efficacy of GANs and synthetic data in enhancing OCT image analysis accuracy. This model not only shows potential for assisting postoperative ICL evaluations, but also for improving OCT automation when data paucity is an issue.

[J Refract Surg. 2024;40(4):e199–e207.]