Automated tear film break-up time measurement for dry eye diagnosis using deep learning.

In the realm of ophthalmology, precise measurement of tear film break-up time (TBUT) plays a crucial role in diagnosing dry eye disease (DED). This study aims to introduce an automated approach utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to mitigate subjectivity and enhance the reliability of TBUT measurement. We employed a dataset of 47 slit lamp videos for development, while a test dataset of 20 slit lamp videos was used for evaluating the proposed approach. The multistep approach for TBUT estimation involves the utilization of a Dual-Task Siamese Network for classifying video frames into tear film breakup or non-breakup categories. Subsequently, a postprocessing step incorporates a Gaussian filter to smooth the instant breakup/non-breakup predictions effectively. Applying a threshold to the smoothed predictions identifies the initiation of tear film breakup. Our proposed method demonstrates on the evaluation dataset a precise breakup/non-breakup classification of video frames, achieving an Area Under the Curve of 0.870. At the video level, we observed a strong Pearson correlation coefficient (r) of 0.81 between TBUT assessments conducted using our approach and the ground truth. These findings underscore the potential of AI-based approaches in quantifying TBUT, presenting a promising avenue for advancing diagnostic methodologies in ophthalmology.

A review of deep learning-based information fusion techniques for multimodal medical image classification.

Multimodal medical imaging plays a pivotal role in clinical diagnosis and research, as it combines information from various imaging modalities to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the underlying pathology. Recently, deep learning-based multimodal fusion techniques have emerged as powerful tools for improving medical image classification. This review offers a thorough analysis of the developments in deep learning-based multimodal fusion for medical classification tasks. We explore the complementary relationships among prevalent clinical modalities and outline three main fusion schemes for multimodal classification networks: input fusion, intermediate fusion (encompassing single-level fusion, hierarchical fusion, and attention-based fusion), and output fusion. By evaluating the performance of these fusion techniques, we provide insight into the suitability of different network architectures for various multimodal fusion scenarios and application domains. Furthermore, we delve into challenges related to network architecture selection, handling incomplete multimodal data management, and the potential limitations of multimodal fusion. Finally, we spotlight the promising future of Transformer-based multimodal fusion techniques and give recommendations for future research in this rapidly evolving field.

DISCOVER: 2-D multiview summarization of Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography for automatic diabetic retinopathy diagnosis.

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), an ocular complication of diabetes, is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Traditionally, DR is monitored using Color Fundus Photography (CFP), a widespread 2-D imaging modality. However, DR classifications based on CFP have poor predictive power, resulting in suboptimal DR management. Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA) is a recent 3-D imaging modality offering enhanced structural and functional information (blood flow) with a wider field of view. This paper investigates automatic DR severity assessment using 3-D OCTA. A straightforward solution to this task is a 3-D neural network classifier. However, 3-D architectures have numerous parameters and typically require many training samples. A lighter solution consists in using 2-D neural network classifiers processing 2-D en-face (or frontal) projections and/or 2-D cross-sectional slices. Such an approach mimics the way ophthalmologists analyze OCTA acquisitions: (1) en-face flow maps are often used to detect avascular zones and neovascularization, and (2) cross-sectional slices are commonly analyzed to detect macular edemas, for instance. However, arbitrary data reduction or selection might result in information loss. Two complementary strategies are thus proposed to optimally summarize OCTA volumes with 2-D images: (1) a parametric en-face projection optimized through deep learning and (2) a cross-sectional slice selection process controlled through gradient-based attribution. The full summarization and DR classification pipeline is trained from end to end. The automatic 2-D summary can be displayed in a viewer or printed in a report to support the decision. We show that the proposed 2-D summarization and classification pipeline outperforms direct 3-D classification with the advantage of improved interpretability.

Federated Learning for Diabetic Retinopathy Detection in a Multi-center Fundus Screening Network.

Federated learning (FL) is a machine learning framework that allows remote clients to collaboratively learn a global model while keeping their training data localized. It has emerged as an effective tool to solve the problem of data privacy protection. In particular, in the medical field, it is gaining relevance for achieving collaborative learning while protecting sensitive data. In this work, we demonstrate the feasibility of FL in the development of a deep learning model for screening diabetic retinopathy (DR) in fundus photographs. To this end, we conduct a simulated FL framework using nearly 700,000 fundus photographs collected from OPHDIAT, a French multi-center screening network for detecting DR. We develop two FL algorithms: 1) a cross-center FL algorithm using data distributed across the OPHDIAT centers and 2) a cross-grader FL algorithm using data distributed across the OPHDIAT graders. We explore and assess different FL strategies and compare them to a conventional learning algorithm, namely centralized learning (CL), where all the data is stored in a centralized repository. For the task of referable DR detection, our simulated FL algorithms achieved similar performance to CL, in terms of area under the ROC curve (AUC): AUC =0.9482 for CL, AUC = 0.9317 for cross-center FL and AUC = 0.9522 for cross-grader FL. Our work indicates that the FL algorithm is a viable and reliable framework that can be applied in a screening network.Clinical relevance- Given that data sharing is regarded as an essential component of modern medical research, achieving collaborative learning while protecting sensitive data is key.

Quantitative gait analysis and prediction using artificial intelligence for patients with gait disorders.

Quantitative Gait Analysis (QGA) is considered as an objective measure of gait performance. In this study, we aim at designing an artificial intelligence that can efficiently predict the progression of gait quality using kinematic data obtained from QGA. For this purpose, a gait database collected from 734 patients with gait disorders is used. As the patient walks, kinematic data is collected during the gait session. This data is processed to generate the Gait Profile Score (GPS) for each gait cycle. Tracking potential GPS variations enables detecting changes in gait quality. In this regard, our work is driven by predicting such future variations. Two approaches were considered: signal-based and image-based. The signal-based one uses raw gait cycles, while the image-based one employs a two-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform (2D FFT) representation of gait cycles. Several architectures were developed, and the obtained Area Under the Curve (AUC) was above 0.72 for both approaches. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to apply neural networks for gait prediction tasks.

Hybrid Fusion of High-Resolution and Ultra-Widefield OCTA Acquisitions for the Automatic Diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy.

Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) can deliver enhanced diagnosis for diabetic retinopathy (DR). This study evaluated a deep learning (DL) algorithm for automatic DR severity assessment using high-resolution and ultra-widefield (UWF) OCTA. Diabetic patients were examined with 6×6 mm2 high-resolution OCTA and 15×15 mm2 UWF-OCTA using PLEX®Elite 9000. A novel DL algorithm was trained for automatic DR severity inference using both OCTA acquisitions. The algorithm employed a unique hybrid fusion framework, integrating structural and flow information from both acquisitions. It was trained on data from 875 eyes of 444 patients. Tested on 53 patients (97 eyes), the algorithm achieved a good area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for detecting DR (0.8868), moderate non-proliferative DR (0.8276), severe non-proliferative DR (0.8376), and proliferative/treated DR (0.9070). These results significantly outperformed detection with the 6×6 mm2 (AUC = 0.8462, 0.7793, 0.7889, and 0.8104, respectively) or 15×15 mm2 (AUC = 0.8251, 0.7745, 0.7967, and 0.8786, respectively) acquisitions alone. Thus, combining high-resolution and UWF-OCTA acquisitions holds the potential for improved early and late-stage DR detection, offering a foundation for enhancing DR management and a clear path for future works involving expanded datasets and integrating additional imaging modalities.

Towards population-independent, multi-disease detection in fundus photographs.

Independent validation studies of automatic diabetic retinopathy screening systems have recently shown a drop of screening performance on external data. Beyond diabetic retinopathy, this study investigates the generalizability of deep learning (DL) algorithms for screening various ocular anomalies in fundus photographs, across heterogeneous populations and imaging protocols. The following datasets are considered: OPHDIAT (France, diabetic population), OphtaMaine (France, general population), RIADD (India, general population) and ODIR (China, general population). Two multi-disease DL algorithms were developed: a Single-Dataset (SD) network, trained on the largest dataset (OPHDIAT), and a Multiple-Dataset (MD) network, trained on multiple datasets simultaneously. To assess their generalizability, both algorithms were evaluated whenever training and test data originate from overlapping datasets or from disjoint datasets. The SD network achieved a mean per-disease area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (mAUC) of 0.9571 on OPHDIAT. However, it generalized poorly to the other three datasets (mAUC < 0.9). When all four datasets were involved in training, the MD network significantly outperformed the SD network (p = 0.0058), indicating improved generality. However, in leave-one-dataset-out experiments, performance of the MD network was significantly lower on populations unseen during training than on populations involved in training (p < 0.0001), indicating imperfect generalizability.

Automation of dry eye disease quantitative assessment: A review.

Dry eye disease (DED) is a common eye condition worldwide and a primary reason for visits to the ophthalmologist. DED diagnosis is performed through a combination of tests, some of which are unfortunately invasive, non-reproducible and lack accuracy. The following review describes methods that diagnose and measure the extent of eye dryness, enabling clinicians to quantify its severity. Our aim with this paper is to review classical methods as well as those that incorporate automation. For only four ways of quantifying DED, we take a deeper look into what main elements can benefit from automation and the different ways studies have incorporated it. Like numerous medical fields, Artificial Intelligence (AI) appears to be the path towards quality DED diagnosis. This review categorises diagnostic methods into the following: classical, semi-automated and promising AI-based automated methods.

Automatic Screening for Ocular Anomalies Using Fundus Photographs.

SIGNIFICANCE: Screening for ocular anomalies using fundus photography is key to prevent vision impairment and blindness. With the growing and aging population, automated algorithms that can triage fundus photographs and provide instant referral decisions are relevant to scale-up screening and face the shortage of ophthalmic expertise. PURPOSE: This study aimed to develop a deep learning algorithm that detects any ocular anomaly in fundus photographs and to evaluate this algorithm for "normal versus anomalous" eye examination classification in the diabetic and general populations. METHODS: The deep learning algorithm was developed and evaluated in two populations: the diabetic and general populations. Our patient cohorts consist of 37,129 diabetic patients from the OPHDIAT diabetic retinopathy screening network in Paris, France, and 7356 general patients from the OphtaMaine private screening network, in Le Mans, France. Each data set was divided into a development subset and a test subset of more than 4000 examinations each. For ophthalmologist/algorithm comparison, a subset of 2014 examinations from the OphtaMaine test subset was labeled by a second ophthalmologist. First, the algorithm was trained on the OPHDIAT development subset. Then, it was fine-tuned on the OphtaMaine development subset. RESULTS: On the OPHDIAT test subset, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for normal versus anomalous classification was 0.9592. On the OphtaMaine test subset, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.8347 before fine-tuning and 0.9108 after fine-tuning. On the ophthalmologist/algorithm comparison subset, the second ophthalmologist achieved a specificity of 0.8648 and a sensitivity of 0.6682. For the same specificity, the fine-tuned algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 0.8248. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed algorithm compares favorably with human performance for normal versus anomalous eye examination classification using fundus photography. Artificial intelligence, which previously targeted a few retinal pathologies, can be used to screen for ocular anomalies comprehensively.

ExplAIn: Explanatory artificial intelligence for diabetic retinopathy diagnosis.

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has proven its relevance for medical decision support. However, the "black-box" nature of successful AI algorithms still holds back their wide-spread deployment. In this paper, we describe an eXplanatory Artificial Intelligence (XAI) that reaches the same level of performance as black-box AI, for the task of classifying Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) severity using Color Fundus Photography (CFP). This algorithm, called ExplAIn, learns to segment and categorize lesions in images; the final image-level classification directly derives from these multivariate lesion segmentations. The novelty of this explanatory framework is that it is trained from end to end, with image supervision only, just like black-box AI algorithms: the concepts of lesions and lesion categories emerge by themselves. For improved lesion localization, foreground/background separation is trained through self-supervision, in such a way that occluding foreground pixels transforms the input image into a healthy-looking image. The advantage of such an architecture is that automatic diagnoses can be explained simply by an image and/or a few sentences. ExplAIn is evaluated at the image level and at the pixel level on various CFP image datasets. We expect this new framework, which jointly offers high classification performance and explainability, to facilitate AI deployment.

Towards improved breast mass detection using dual-view mammogram matching.

Breast cancer screening benefits from the visual analysis of multiple views of routine mammograms. As for clinical practice, computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems could be enhanced by integrating multi-view information. In this work, we propose a new multi-tasking framework that combines craniocaudal (CC) and mediolateral-oblique (MLO) mammograms for automatic breast mass detection. Rather than addressing mass recognition only, we exploit multi-tasking properties of deep networks to jointly learn mass matching and classification, towards better detection performance. Specifically, we propose a unified Siamese network that combines patch-level mass/non-mass classification and dual-view mass matching to take full advantage of multi-view information. This model is exploited in a full image detection pipeline based on You-Only-Look-Once (YOLO) region proposals. We carry out exhaustive experiments to highlight the contribution of dual-view matching for both patch-level classification and examination-level detection scenarios. Results demonstrate that mass matching highly improves the full-pipeline detection performance by outperforming conventional single-task schemes with 94.78% as Area Under the Curve (AUC) score and a classification accuracy of 0.8791. Interestingly, mass classification also improves the performance of mass matching, which proves the complementarity of both tasks. Our method further guides clinicians by providing accurate dual-view mass correspondences, which suggests that it could act as a relevant second opinion for mammogram interpretation and breast cancer diagnosis.

Automatic detection of rare pathologies in fundus photographs using few-shot learning.

In the last decades, large datasets of fundus photographs have been collected in diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening networks. Through deep learning, these datasets were used to train automatic detectors for DR and a few other frequent pathologies, with the goal to automate screening. One challenge limits the adoption of such systems so far: automatic detectors ignore rare conditions that ophthalmologists currently detect, such as papilledema or anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. The reason is that standard deep learning requires too many examples of these conditions. However, this limitation can be addressed with few-shot learning, a machine learning paradigm where a classifier has to generalize to a new category not seen in training, given only a few examples of this category. This paper presents a new few-shot learning framework that extends convolutional neural networks (CNNs), trained for frequent conditions, with an unsupervised probabilistic model for rare condition detection. It is based on the observation that CNNs often perceive photographs containing the same anomalies as similar, even though these CNNs were trained to detect unrelated conditions. This observation was based on the t-SNE visualization tool, which we decided to incorporate in our probabilistic model. Experiments on a dataset of 164,660 screening examinations from the OPHDIAT screening network show that 37 conditions, out of 41, can be detected with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) greater than 0.8 (average AUC: 0.938). In particular, this framework significantly outperforms other frameworks for detecting rare conditions, including multitask learning, transfer learning and Siamese networks, another few-shot learning solution. We expect these richer predictions to trigger the adoption of automated eye pathology screening, which will revolutionize clinical practice in ophthalmology.

CATARACTS: Challenge on automatic tool annotation for cataRACT surgery.

Surgical tool detection is attracting increasing attention from the medical image analysis community. The goal generally is not to precisely locate tools in images, but rather to indicate which tools are being used by the surgeon at each instant. The main motivation for annotating tool usage is to design efficient solutions for surgical workflow analysis, with potential applications in report generation, surgical training and even real-time decision support. Most existing tool annotation algorithms focus on laparoscopic surgeries. However, with 19 million interventions per year, the most common surgical procedure in the world is cataract surgery. The CATARACTS challenge was organized in 2017 to evaluate tool annotation algorithms in the specific context of cataract surgery. It relies on more than nine hours of videos, from 50 cataract surgeries, in which the presence of 21 surgical tools was manually annotated by two experts. With 14 participating teams, this challenge can be considered a success. As might be expected, the submitted solutions are based on deep learning. This paper thoroughly evaluates these solutions: in particular, the quality of their annotations are compared to that of human interpretations. Next, lessons learnt from the differential analysis of these solutions are discussed. We expect that they will guide the design of efficient surgery monitoring tools in the near future.

A Comparative Evaluation of a New Generation of Diffractive Trifocal and Extended Depth of Focus Intraocular Lenses.

PURPOSE: To evaluate and compare the performance of two diffractive trifocal and one extended depth of focus (EDOF) intraocular lenses (IOLs). METHODS: In this 6-month, single-center, prospective, randomized, comparative study, patients undergoing routine cataract surgery were randomized to receive one of two trifocal IOLs (AcrySof IQ PanOptix; Alcon Laboratories, Inc., Fort Worth, TX, or FineVision Micro F; PhysIOL SA, Liège, Belgium) or an EDOF IOL (TECNIS Symfony; Abbott Medical Optics, Inc., Abbott Park, IL). There were 20 patients in each group. The primary outcome was binocular and monocular uncorrected distance (UDVA), intermediate (UIVA), and near (UNVA) visual acuity. The secondary outcomes were quality of vision and aberrometry. RESULTS: There was no statistically significant difference between groups in either monocular (P = .717) or binocular (P = .837) UDVA. Monocular and binocular UNVA were statistically and significantly better for both trifocal lenses than for the EDOF IOL (P = .002). The percentage of patients with J2 UNVA was 52.5% monocularly and 70% binocularly for the TECNIS Symfony IOL, 81.5% monocularly and 100% binocularly for the AcrySof IQ PanOptix IOL, and 82.5% monocularly and 95% binocularly for the FineVision Micro F IOL. There was no significant difference in binocular UIVA between groups; VA was better than 0.6 in 55%, 53%, and 35% of patients with the TECNIS Symfony, AcrySof IQ Pan-Optix, and FineVision Micro F IOLs, respectively. Overall, 90% patients achieved spectacle independence. There were no differences in visual symptoms and aberrometry among groups. CONCLUSIONS: All three IOLs provided good visual acuity at all distances, a high percentage of spectacle independence, and little or no impact of visual symptoms on the patients' daily functioning. Near vision was statistically better for both trifocal IOLs compared to the EDOF IOL. [J Refract Surg. 2018;34(8):507-514.].

Monitoring tool usage in surgery videos using boosted convolutional and recurrent neural networks.

This paper investigates the automatic monitoring of tool usage during a surgery, with potential applications in report generation, surgical training and real-time decision support. Two surgeries are considered: cataract surgery, the most common surgical procedure, and cholecystectomy, one of the most common digestive surgeries. Tool usage is monitored in videos recorded either through a microscope (cataract surgery) or an endoscope (cholecystectomy). Following state-of-the-art video analysis solutions, each frame of the video is analyzed by convolutional neural networks (CNNs) whose outputs are fed to recurrent neural networks (RNNs) in order to take temporal relationships between events into account. Novelty lies in the way those CNNs and RNNs are trained. Computational complexity prevents the end-to-end training of "CNN+RNN" systems. Therefore, CNNs are usually trained first, independently from the RNNs. This approach is clearly suboptimal for surgical tool analysis: many tools are very similar to one another, but they can generally be differentiated based on past events. CNNs should be trained to extract the most useful visual features in combination with the temporal context. A novel boosting strategy is proposed to achieve this goal: the CNN and RNN parts of the system are simultaneously enriched by progressively adding weak classifiers (either CNNs or RNNs) trained to improve the overall classification accuracy. Experiments were performed in a dataset of 50 cataract surgery videos, where the usage of 21 surgical tools was manually annotated, and a dataset of 80 cholecystectomy videos, where the usage of 7 tools was manually annotated. Very good classification performance are achieved in both datasets: tool usage could be labeled with an average area under the ROC curve of Az=0.9961 and Az=0.9939, respectively, in offline mode (using past, present and future information), and Az=0.9957 and Az=0.9936, respectively, in online mode (using past and present information only).

Surgical tool detection in cataract surgery videos through multi-image fusion inside a convolutional neural network.

The automatic detection of surgical tools in surgery videos is a promising solution for surgical workflow analysis. It paves the way to various applications, including surgical workflow optimization, surgical skill evaluation and real-time warning generation. A solution based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) is proposed in this paper. Unlike existing solutions, the proposed CNN does not analyze images independently. it analyzes sequences of consecutive images. Features extracted from each image by the CNN are fused inside the network using the optical flow. For improved performance, this multi-image fusion strategy is also applied while training the CNN. The proposed framework was evaluated in a dataset of 30 cataract surgery videos (6 hours of videos). Ten tool categories were defined by surgeons. The proposed system was able to detect each of these categories with a high area under the ROC curve (0.953 ≤ Az ≤ 0.987). The proposed detector, based on multi-image fusion, was significantly more sensitive and specific than a similar system analyzing images independently (p = 2.98 × 10-6 and p = 2.07 × 10-3, respectively).

Smart data augmentation for surgical tool detection on the surgical tray.

In recent years, several algorithms were proposed to monitor a surgery through the automatic analysis of endoscope or microscope videos. This paper aims at improving existing solutions for the automated analysis of cataract surgeries, the most common ophthalmic surgery, which are performed under a microscope. Through the analysis of a video recording the surgical tray, it is possible to know which tools are put on or taken from the surgical tray, and therefore which ones are likely being used by the surgeon. Combining these observations with observations from the microscope video should enhance the overall performance of the system. Our contribution is twofold: first, datasets of artificial surgery videos are generated in order to train the convolutional neural networks (CNN) and, second, two classification methods are evaluated to detect the presence of tools in videos. Also, we assess the impact of the manner of building the artificial datasets on the tool recognition performance. By design, the proposed artificial datasets highly reduce the need for fully annotated real datasets and should also produce better performance. Experiments show that one of the proposed classification methods was able to detect most of the targeted tools well.

Deep image mining for diabetic retinopathy screening.

Deep learning is quickly becoming the leading methodology for medical image analysis. Given a large medical archive, where each image is associated with a diagnosis, efficient pathology detectors or classifiers can be trained with virtually no expert knowledge about the target pathologies. However, deep learning algorithms, including the popular ConvNets, are black boxes: little is known about the local patterns analyzed by ConvNets to make a decision at the image level. A solution is proposed in this paper to create heatmaps showing which pixels in images play a role in the image-level predictions. In other words, a ConvNet trained for image-level classification can be used to detect lesions as well. A generalization of the backpropagation method is proposed in order to train ConvNets that produce high-quality heatmaps. The proposed solution is applied to diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening in a dataset of almost 90,000 fundus photographs from the 2015 Kaggle Diabetic Retinopathy competition and a private dataset of almost 110,000 photographs (e-ophtha). For the task of detecting referable DR, very good detection performance was achieved: Az=0.954 in Kaggle's dataset and Az=0.949 in e-ophtha. Performance was also evaluated at the image level and at the lesion level in the DiaretDB1 dataset, where four types of lesions are manually segmented: microaneurysms, hemorrhages, exudates and cotton-wool spots. For the task of detecting images containing these four lesion types, the proposed detector, which was trained to detect referable DR, outperforms recent algorithms trained to detect those lesions specifically, with pixel-level supervision. At the lesion level, the proposed detector outperforms heatmap generation algorithms for ConvNets. This detector is part of the Messidor® system for mobile eye pathology screening. Because it does not rely on expert knowledge or manual segmentation for detecting relevant patterns, the proposed solution is a promising image mining tool, which has the potential to discover new biomarkers in images.

Multiple-Instance Learning for Medical Image and Video Analysis.

Multiple-instance learning (MIL) is a recent machine-learning paradigm that is particularly well suited to medical image and video analysis (MIVA) tasks. Based solely on class labels assigned globally to images or videos, MIL algorithms learn to detect relevant patterns locally in images or videos. These patterns are then used for classification at a global level. Because supervision relies on global labels, manual segmentations are not needed to train MIL algorithms, unlike traditional single-instance learning (SIL) algorithms. Consequently, these solutions are attracting increasing interest from the MIVA community: since the term was coined by Dietterich et al. in 1997, 73 research papers about MIL have been published in the MIVA literature. This paper reviews the existing strategies for modeling MIVA tasks as MIL problems, recommends general-purpose MIL algorithms for each type of MIVA tasks, and discusses MIVA-specific MIL algorithms. Various experiments performed in medical image and video datasets are compiled in order to back up these discussions. This meta-analysis shows that, besides being more convenient than SIL solutions, MIL algorithms are also more accurate in many cases. In other words, MIL is the ideal solution for many MIVA tasks. Recent trends are discussed, and future directions are proposed for this emerging paradigm.

Target Properties Effects on Central versus Peripheral Vertical Fusion Interaction Tested on a 3D Platform.

PURPOSE: We investigated the impact of target properties on vertical fusion amplitude (VFA) using a 3D display platform; the performance of the subjects allowed us to assess how central and peripheral retina regions interact during the fusion process. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Fourteen subjects were involved in the test. VFA was recorded by varying the viewing distance, target complexity, disparity velocity, lighting condition and background luminance. Base-up prisms were introduced to create vertical disparity in the peripheral retinal area, whereas an offset compensation was added in the central area. Data were analyzed in JMP software using T-test and repeated-measures ANOVA tests. RESULTS: VFA is significantly affected by target properties including viewing distance, target complexity and disparity velocity; the impact from lighting condition and background luminance is not significant. Although central retina plays a crucial role in the fusion process, peripheral regions also affect the fusion performance when stimulus size on retina and contents disparity values are modified between central and peripheral vision. CONCLUSION: Vertical fusion is affected by various target properties. For the first time, peripheral vertical disparity direction effects on central fusion and eye motion response have been explored. Besides, a quantitative interaction of central and peripheral fusion is observed, which could be applied in clinical measurement on binocular disease concerning central and peripheral vision conflict.