%0 Book Section %B 3rd Russian-Bavarian Conference on Bio-Medical Engineering, Proceedings %D 2007 %T Appearance-based Approach to Extract an Age-related Biomarker from Retinal Images %A Rudriger Bock %A Jörg Meier %A László Gábor Nyúl %A Simone Wärntges %A Georg Michelson %A Joachim Hornegger %E Joachim Hornegger %E Ernst W Mayr %E Sergey Schookin %E Hubertus Feußner %E Nassir Navab %E Yuri V. Gulyaev %E Kurt Höller %E Victor Ganzha %X

We present an appearance-based method that extracts a new age-related biomarker from retina images. The Principal Component Analysis is applied on intensity values of the illumination corrected green channel of fundus images. The algorithm does not use segmentation, is robust and shows a high range of reliability. It identified an age-related feature with a strong influence of the temporal parapapillary area and the optic nerve head. The feature correlates with chronological age of the participants and is significantly influenced by the appearance of cardiovascular risk factors such as smoking and hypertension, and thus it can be designated a biomarker. We extract and validate a medical parameter from retina images applying a purely data-driven approach without using any prior knowledge.

%B 3rd Russian-Bavarian Conference on Bio-Medical Engineering, Proceedings %I Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg %C Erlangen %V 1 %P 127 - 131 %8 2007 %G eng %9 Conference paper