Automated Segmentation of Neural Canal Opening and Optic Cup in 3D Spectral Optical Coherence Tomography Volumes of the Optic Nerve Head

PURPOSE. To develop an automated approach for segmenting the neural canal opening (NCO) and cup at the level of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE)/Bruch’s membrane (BM) complex in spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) volumes. To investigate the correspondence and discrepancy between the NCO-based metrics and the clinical disc margin on fundus photographs of glaucoma subjects. METHODS. SD-OCT scans and corresponding stereo fundus pho-tographs of the optic nerve head were obtained from 68 eyes of 34 patients with glaucoma or glaucoma suspicion. Manual planimetry was performed by three glaucoma experts to delin-eate a reference standard (RS) for cup and disc margins from the images. An automated graph-theoretic approach was used to identify the NCO and cup. NCO-based metrics were com-pared with the RS