- Heinke, Anna;
- Zhang, Haochen;
- Broniarek, Krzysztof;
- Michalska-Małecka, Katarzyna;
- Elsner, Wyatt;
- Galang, Carlo Miguel B;
- Deussen, Daniel N;
- Warter, Alexandra;
- Kalaw, Fritz;
- Nagel, Ines;
- Agnihotri, Akshay;
- Mehta, Nehal N;
- Klaas, Julian Elias;
- Schmelter, Valerie;
- Kozak, Igor;
- Baxter, Sally L;
- Bartsch, Dirk-Uwe;
- Cheng, Lingyun;
- An, Cheolhong;
- Nguyen, Truong;
- Freeman, William R
This study investigates the efficacy of predicting age-related macular degeneration (AMD) activity through deep neural networks (DNN) using a cross-instrument training dataset composed of Optical coherence tomography-angiography (OCTA) images from two different manufacturers. A retrospective cross-sectional study analyzed 2D vascular en-face OCTA images from Heidelberg Spectralis (1478 samples: 1102 training, 276 validation, 100 testing) and Optovue Solix (1003 samples: 754 training, 189 validation, 60 testing). OCTA scans were labeled based on clinical diagnoses and adjacent B-scan OCT fluid information, categorizing activity into normal, dry AMD, active wet AMD, and wet AMD in remission. Experiments explored cross-instrument disease classification using separate and combined datasets for training the DNN. Testing involved 100 Heidelberg and 60 Optovue samples. Training on Heidelberg data alone yielded 73% accuracy on Heidelberg images and 60% on Optovue images. Training on Optovue data alone resulted in 34% accuracy on Heidelberg and 85% on Optovue images. Combined training data from both instruments achieved 78% accuracy on Heidelberg and 76% on Optovue test sets. Results indicate that cross-instrument classifier training demonstrates high classification prediction accuracy, making cross-instrument training viable for future clinical applications. This implies that vascular morphology in OCTA can predict disease progression.