Date published: 18/10/18
Developing the diagnostic capability of CEAS
- Name: Alaa Nassar
- Current Organisation: University of Bradford
In May, Translate opened its summer student project scheme to support small medical technology development projects in the Leeds City Region. The scheme proved to be a massive success and 26 unique projects were funded. Learn more about their work in this blog.
My name is Alaa S. Nassar and I am a student at the University of Bradford. I am working on improving the performance and the accuracy of an automated real-time system termed the Corneal Endothelium Analysis System (CEAS) for the segmentation and computation of endothelial cells in images of the human cornea obtained by in vivo corneal confocal microscopy.
To date, quantitative analysis of corneal sub-basal nerve and endothelial cell abnormalities has been manually performed by ophthalmologists using time-consuming and highly subjective semi-automatic tools, which require an operator interaction.
The main aim of my summer student project was to develop new diagnostic tools for extracting clinical features from the cornea’s endothelium layer. Abnormalities of the corneal endothelial cells may be associated with a number of corneal and systemic diseases.
I would like to thank the Translate Summer Student Project Scheme for their generosity for the grant for my project. This grant enabled me to work hard on further improving the performance of the CEAS software.
Two different pre-processing have been proposed and applied to reduce noise and enhance image quality and endothelial cell boundaries. The effectiveness and robustness of the CEAS software has been investigated, in processing different type of images acquired by in-vivo specular microscopy. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to all members involved in this project, professors and medical doctors, who provided me an inspiring working environment and significant support over the course of this project. Prof. Prof Rami Qahwaji (University of Bradford) for his nomination to me for this grant and the continuous support of my PhD study and related research, for his patience, motivation, and immense knowledge and Prof. Rayaz A. Malik (University of Manchester), for kindly providing the CCM images for the dataset of endothelium layer.
