Grid-Based Exploration Of Oct Thickness Data Of Intraretinal Layers

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) enables high-resolution 3D imaging of the human retina to understand a variety of retinal and systemic disorders. Commonly, the thickness of segmented intraretinal layers is used to assess the condition of the retina. However, the thickness data are complex and thus, need to be considerably reduced prior to further processing and analysis. This leads to a loss of information and may hinder the discovery of subtle and localized retinal changes, which are important for an early detection of certain diseases. On this account, we propose an enhanced grid-based reduction of OCT thickness data. We adapt established grid types for retinal thickness data and suggest alternative grids that capture more information. We integrate our data reduction approach into a visual analysis tool that supports an automated computation and interactive exploration of different grids. We demonstrate the application of our tool and show how it can be used to support experts in choosing and comparing appropriate grid representations for given OCT thickness data.