Current applications of machine learning in the screening and diagnosis of glaucoma: a systematic review and Meta-analysis

AIM: To compare the effectiveness of two well described machine learning modalities, ocular coherence tomography(OCT) and fundal photography, in terms of diagnostic accuracy in the screening and diagnosis of glaucoma. METHODS: A systematic search of Embase and Pub Med databases was undertaken up to 1 st of February 2019. Articles were identified alongside their reference lists and relevant studies were aggregated. A Meta-analysis of diagnostic accuracy in terms of area under the receiver operating curve(AUROC) was performed. For the studies which did not report an AUROC, reported sensitivity and specificity values were combined to create a summary ROC curve which was included in the Meta-analysis.RESULTS: A total of 23 studies were deemed suitable for inclusion in the Meta-analysis. This included 10 papers from the OCT cohort and 13 from the fundal photos cohort. Random effects Meta-analysis gave a pooled AUROC of 0.957(95%CI=0.917 to 0.997) for fundal photos and 0.923(95%CI=0.889 to 0.957) for the OCT cohort. The slightly higher accuracy of fundal photos methods is likely attributable to the much larger database of images used to train the models(59 788 vs 1743). CONCLUSION: No demonstrable difference is shown between the diagnostic accuracy of the two modalities. The ease of access and lower cost associated with fundal photo acquisition make that the more appealing option in terms of screening on a global scale, however further studies need to be undertaken, owing largely to the poor study quality associated with the fundal photography cohort.