A Web Service Based Mobile Application for Detecting Kayser-Fleischer Ring in Eye Cornea

A Kayser-Fleischer ring is a visible golden-brown, sometimes orange or greyish, pigmentation in the cornea. This is a common symptom of a rare genetic disorder known as Wilson Disease. This pathology is cause of a malfunction in the copper excretion from the organism. Copper accumulates in tissues and consequently is responsible of oxidative processes in the organs affected. Kayser-Fleischer ring is a direct consequence of the copper deposit in the cornea. It is considered a basic diagnostic sign of Wilson disease in individuals with neurological disorders due to copper accumulation in brain. However, few ophthalmologists are experienced in identifying Kayser-Fleischer rings. In this article, a mobile application is proposed to detect automatically the Kayser-Fleischer ring. The smartphone takes a photograph of patient's eye and sends it to a webservice. The latter performs the image processing by using a segmentation algorithm. Once a Kayser-Fleischer ring has been detected, biometric measurements provide the percentage extent of the corneal region affected by the symptom. This parameter allows the system to obtain information on the severity of the oxidative process as an indirect measure of the pathology stage. Subsequently, further medical examinations support the physician to diagnose the Wilson disease. The proposed diagnostic measurement system is non-invasive and fully automated. At the moment the detection of the Kayser-Fleischer ring is made by an ophthalmologist with a visual examination. However, the symptoms are not always recognized, and therefore interpretation errors and false-negative diagnoses are possible. In this article, a proposed diagnostic tool is described to improve the accuracy of methods used in practice and to resolve the physician's suspicion about the pathology occurrence.