In this talk the various algorithms for the automated analysis of images from the human cornea, developed over the years at BioImLab, will be presented. Corneal images from both specular and confocal microscopy have been addressed and techniques from classical image processing and analysis, machine learning and pattern recognition, statistical analysis, and others have been applied. The aim of the analysis was to provide ophthalmologists with a quantitative description of the main clinical parameters used in their diagnostic procedures. Clinical reliability, total run-time, and user-friendliness have thus been the key features taken into account during the development. Tools to analyze several of the cornea layers (epithelium, subbasal nerves, stroma, endothelium) will be described and their performance will be assessed by comparing them, wherever possible, with manual analysis. Some hints about work currently in progress will also be provided to give a perspective of possible future developments.
Alfredo Ruggeri was born in Vicenza, Italy in 1955. He received his Degree (Laurea in Ingegneria Elettronica) from the University of Padua, Italy, in 1979. Since 1979 he has been associated with the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padua, where he is presently an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering. He is faculty member of the PhD School in Information Engineering at the University of Padua, and the Coordinator for International Activities for the Department of Information Engineering. In 1982 he has been Visiting Scholar at the Biocybernetics Laboratory, Departments of Computer Science and Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA (USA), and from 1994 to 2003 he has spent part of summer as Visiting Professor at the Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA (USA).
His research activities have been in the field of modeling of metabolic and endocrine systems, with the use of simulation, system identification, and optimal experiment design techniques. His current research interests are in the area of biomedical image processing and analysis and their application to ophthalmology, with special emphasis on the analysis of corneal and retinal images. He has published over 250 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, books and conference proceedings and has been the organizer of sessions on image analysis in ophthalmology at various international conferences. He consulted with several international companies on biomedical data analysis and more recently on image processing and analysis in ophthalmology. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), and member of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) and the European Association for Vision and Eye Research (EVER).
He is cofounder of M31, a private incubator that since 2007 created several high-technology companies, and of Resono Ophthalmic, an ophthalmic instrumentation company.
