Machine learning diagnosed optic neuropathy from optical coherence tomography scans more accurately than clinicians did.
OCT-based optic neuropathy diagnosis using explainable and privacy-preserving machine learning.
Md Mahmudul Hasan … Arcot Sowmya
Scientific reports · 2026
Background
Glaucoma shares similarities with neurodegenerative conditions like dementia, Parkinson's disease, and ischaemic optic neuropathy, which affect ocular health.
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Results
26.3%
machine caught more optic-nerve damage cases than eye doctors did
More results
However, current studies exclude neurodegenerative cases in neuropathy diagnosis and rely on 'black box' models.
A team of three clinicians, with 12,11, and 6 years of experience, evaluated their performance on the same dataset for a human versus machine comparison, with the machine achieving an area under the curve of 0.90 for classifying neuropathy.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, both non-explainable and explainable methods show promise in enhancing diagnostic support for clinical decision-making, with the privacy-preserving approach safeguarding data privacy.