Computational approach for tear film assessment based on break-up dynamics

• Tear film analysis is essential for dry eye characterization.
• Tear film break-up characterization by hand is subjective and hard to obtain.
• We propose a fully automatic methodology for break-up time computation.
• We include a quantitative and qualitative analysis based on break-up dynamics.
• Provides useful clinical information with similar results to expert manual annotation.

Dry eye syndrome is a common disorder of the tear film which affects a remarkable percentage of the population, impacting on quality of life. The study of the tear film stability is essential for the dry eye characterisation. The Break-Up Time (BUT) is a clinical test which computes the time the first tear film break-up appears. Besides the time, break-up properties can be related to specific aspects of the tear film that could affect dry eye severity. This work describes a fully automatic methodology to compute the BUT measurement and evaluate the dynamics of break-up areas. This methodology has been tested on a data set consisting of 18 tear film videos, achieving similar results to the manual annotations marked by the experts. This analysis provides useful additional information for the tear film assessment.