Automated interpretation of fundus fluorescein angiography with multi-retinal vascular lesion segmentation
Purpose: Fundus fluorescein angiography (FFA) is essential for diagnosing and managing retinal vascular diseases, yet its evaluation is time-consuming and subject to inter-observer variability. We aim to develop a deep-learning-based framework for multi-lesion segmentation in FFA images and to evaluate its primary performance on standard 55 ° images. Methods: A dataset of 428 standard 55 ° FFA images and 53 ultra-wide-field (UWF) FFA images was annotated for non-perfusion areas (NPA), microaneurysms (MA), neovascularization (NV) and laser spots. A residual U-Net framework was trained using a data-pooling strategy. The primary analysis was performed on the 55 ° test set, whereas the UWF subset was analyzed only as a preliminary exploratory observation because of its limited sample size. Performance was assessed using Dice score, Intersection over Union (IoU) and recall. Results: < 0.05). Exploratory UWF analysis showed lower overlap-based performance, highlighting the likely impact of domain shift and the need for larger UWF-specific datasets. Conclusion: This study has established a highly consistent and reproducible framework for multi-lesion segmentation in FFA images. The model may help standardize lesion quantification, reduce manual grading burden, and support future development of larger multi-center FFA datasets.
Authors
- Shoujin Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6094-129X)
- Yingfeng Zheng
- Fan Song
- Danli Shi
- Mingguang He
- Weiyi Zhang
- Xianwen Shang
- Ziwei Zhao
- Yan Lu
Institutions
- Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HK)
- Sun Yat-sen University (CN)
- Vision Eye Institute (AU)
- Foshan Second People's Hospital (CN)
- Shenzhen Technology University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Frontiers in Medicine
- Published
- 2026-04-07
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2026.1762735
- Primary Topic
- Retinal Imaging and Analysis
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00