Laboratório de Biofísica Teórico-Experimental e Computacional, Departamento de Morfologia e Fisiologia Animal, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biociência Animal, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brasil.
Braz J Med Biol Res. 2009 Oct;42(10):930-4. doi: 10.1590/s0100-879x2009005000020. Epub 2009 Sep 4.
The fractal dimension has been employed as a useful parameter in the diagnosis of retinal disease. Avakian et al. (Curr Eye Res 2002; 24: 274-280), comparing the vascular pattern of normal patients with mild to moderate non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR), found a significant difference between them only in the macular region. This significant difference in the box-counting fractal dimension of the macular region between normal and mild NPDR patients has been proposed as a method of precocious diagnosis of NPDR. The aim of the present study was to determine if fractal dimensions can really be used as a parameter for the early diagnosis of NPDR. Box-counting and information fractal dimensions were used to parameterize the vascular pattern of the human retina. The two methods were applied to the whole retina and to nine anatomical regions of the retina in 5 individuals with mild NPDR and in 28 diabetic but opthalmically normal individuals (controls), with age between 31 and 86 years. All images of retina were obtained from the Digital Retinal Images for Vessel Extraction (DRIVE) database. The results showed that the fractal dimension parameter was not sensitive enough to be of use for an early diagnosis of NPDR.
分形维数已被用作诊断视网膜疾病的有用参数。Avakian 等人（Curr Eye Res 2002; 24: 274-280）比较了正常患者和轻度至中度非增殖性糖尿病视网膜病变（NPDR）患者的血管模式，仅在黄斑区域发现了它们之间的显著差异。正常和轻度 NPDR 患者黄斑区的盒计数分形维数的这种显著差异被提议作为 NPDR 早期诊断的一种方法。本研究旨在确定分形维数是否真的可以用作 NPDR 早期诊断的参数。使用盒子计数和信息分形维数来参数化人视网膜的血管模式。这两种方法应用于 5 名轻度 NPDR 患者和 28 名糖尿病但眼部正常的个体（对照组）的整个视网膜和视网膜的 9 个解剖区域，年龄在 31 至 86 岁之间。所有视网膜图像均来自 Digital Retinal Images for Vessel Extraction（DRIVE）数据库。结果表明，分形维数参数不够敏感，无法用于 NPDR 的早期诊断。
