Retinopathy of prematurity: Fractal analysis of images in different stages of the disease

Abstract

Retinopathy of prematurity is a potentially blinding proliferative disease of the retinal vasculature that affects premature infants with low birth weights. This paper explores the possibility of applying fractal analysis to images of blood vessels in the human retinae with three types of retinopathy. Although the fractal analysis suggests that the retinal images with different grade of retinopathy are more complex than those without retinopathy, this technique cannot completely distinguish retinal vessels in a patient with inactive and active retinopathy. Furthermore, the fractal dimension of retinal images in children with diagnosed aggressive retinopathy is higher than the fractal dimensions of the same images after laser surgery. Our results lead to the conclusion that the blood vessels in the retinae with aggressive retinopathy are more complex, irregular in shape and have a higher degree of vessel aberration than those vessels with 'typical' retinopathy.