Explainable machine learning for post PKR surgery follow-up

Photorefractive Keratectomy (PRK) is a widely used laser-assisted refractive surgical technique. In some cases, it leads to temporary subepithelial inflammation or fibrosis linked to visual haze. There are to our knowledge no physics based and quantitative tools to monitor these symptoms. We here present a comprehensive machine learning-based algorithm for the detection of fibrosis based on spectral domain optical coherence tomography images recorded in vivo on standard clinical devices. Because of the rarity of these phenomena, we trained the model on corneas presenting Fuchs’ dystrophy causing similar, but permanent, fibrosis symptoms, and applied it to images from patients who have undergone PRK surgery. Our study shows that the model output (probability of Fuchs’ dystrophy classification) provides a quantified and explainable indicator of corneal healing for post-operative follow-up.