The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 12, 2017
Filed:
May. 12, 2016
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD (US);
Voxeleron Llc, Pleasanton, CA (US);
Joseph L. Mankowski, Severna Park, MD (US);
Jonathan D. Oakley, Pleasanton, CA (US);
Daniel B. Russakoff, San Francisco, CA (US);
THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, Baltimore, MD (US);
VOXELERON, LLC, Pleasanton, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention is directed to a software algorithm that measures the number of corneal nerve fibers in images captured by microscopy including images from patients obtained by in vivo corneal confocal microscopy, a noninvasive technique. The present invention solves a complicated segmentation problem, by exploiting the piece wise linear nature of the nerve fibers—i.e., the nerves are made up of a lot of straight line segments. The image is split into sub-regions, where each sub-region contains nerves mostly running in the same, straight direction. Having the nerves all in straight-lines within a single 2d image region dramatically simplifies the segmentation problem. The image intensities are summed in the direction of the nerves to reduce the 2d representation to a 1d signal having pronounced peaks where the nerves are located.