Accuracy of automated machine learning in classifying retinal pathologies from ultra-widefield pseudocolour fundus images.

AIMS: Automated machine learning (AutoML) is a novel tool in artificial intelligence (AI). This study assessed the discriminative performance of AutoML in differentiating retinal vein occlusion (RVO), retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and retinal detachment (RD) from normal fundi using ultra-widefield (UWF) pseudocolour fundus images. METHODS: Two ophthalmologists without coding experience carried out AutoML model design using a publicly available image data set (2137 labelled images). The data set was reviewed for low-quality and mislabeled images and then uploaded to the Google Cloud AutoML Vision platform for training and testing. We designed multiple binary models to differentiate RVO, RP and RD from normal fundi and compared them to bespoke models obtained from the literature. We then devised a multiclass model to detect RVO, RP and RD. Saliency maps were generated to assess the interpretability of the model. RESULTS: The AutoML models demonstrated high diagnostic properties in the binary classification tasks that were generally comparable to bespoke deep-learning models (area under the precision-recall curve (AUPRC) 0.921-1, sensitivity 84.91%-89.77%, specificity 78.72%-100%). The multiclass AutoML model had an AUPRC of 0.876, a sensitivity of 77.93% and a positive predictive value of 82.59%. The per-label sensitivity and specificity, respectively, were normal fundi (91.49%, 86.75%), RVO (83.02%, 92.50%), RP (72.00%, 100%) and RD (79.55%,96.80%). CONCLUSION: AutoML models created by ophthalmologists without coding experience can detect RVO, RP and RD in UWF images with very good diagnostic accuracy. The performance was comparable to bespoke deep-learning models derived by AI experts for RVO and RP but not for RD.

Predictive modeling of proliferative vitreoretinopathy using automated machine learning by ophthalmologists without coding experience.

We aimed to assess the feasibility of machine learning (ML) algorithm design to predict proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR) by ophthalmologists without coding experience using automated ML (AutoML). The study was a retrospective cohort study of 506 eyes who underwent pars plana vitrectomy for rhegmatogenous retinal detachment (RRD) by a single surgeon at a tertiary-care hospital between 2012 and 2019. Two ophthalmologists without coding experience used an interactive application in MATLAB to build and evaluate ML algorithms for the prediction of postoperative PVR using clinical data from the electronic health records. The clinical features associated with postoperative PVR were determined by univariate feature selection. The area under the curve (AUC) for predicting postoperative PVR was better for models that included pre-existing PVR as an input. The quadratic support vector machine (SVM) model built using all selected clinical features had an AUC of 0.90, a sensitivity of 63.0%, and a specificity of 97.8%. An optimized Naïve Bayes algorithm that did not include pre-existing PVR as an input feature had an AUC of 0.81, a sensitivity of 54.3%, and a specificity of 92.4%. In conclusion, the development of ML models for the prediction of PVR by ophthalmologists without coding experience is feasible. Input from a data scientist might still be needed to tackle class imbalance-a common challenge in ML classification using real-world clinical data.