A New Method to Manipulate Conventional OCT Images to Measure Changes in the Relative Haemoglobin Oxygen Saturation

Abstract

Conventional OCT gray scale images hidden information that do not let the physician to measure the retina oxygen blood saturation. We discuss in this chapter a new approach to extract valuable information from conventional OCT images. The main idea is to convert OCT images to colored images that let the physician to identify more easily the complex structures at the retina circulatory network. A key point in this chapter is not only to identify OCT differences through illness, but also to find a metrics to predict the percent (%) of oxygen saturation in the eye fundus. We will focus on the difficulties to measure oxygen saturation within the ocular vasculature from light reflection. Discussion concerns about a new metric to measure the oxygen saturation within the blood vessels from OCT images. We propose to transmit the lecturer the need to take advantage of the properties within HbO2 and Hb when absorbing light and how that absorption reflected in gray color intensity can be converted as an algorithm to measure the oxygen saturation numerically.