Combining Fundus Images and Fluorescein Angiography for Artery/Vein Classification Using the Hierarchical Vessel Graph Network

Kyoung Jin Noh, Sang Jun Park, Soochahn Lee

Abstract: We present a new framework for retinal artery/vein classification from fundus images and corresponding fluorescein angiography (FA) images. While FA seem to provide the most relevant information, it is often insufficient depending on the acquisition conditions. As fundus images are often acquired by default, we combine the fundus image and FA within a parallel convolutional neural network to extract the maximum information in the generated features. Furthermore, we use these features as the input to a hierarchical graph neural network to ensure that the connectivity of vessels plays a part in the classification. We provide investigative evidence through ablative and comparative quantitative evaluations to better determine the optimal configuration in combining the fundus image and FA in a deep learning framework and demonstrate the enhancement in performance compared to previous methods.