DeepPDT-Net: predicting the outcome of photodynamic therapy for chronic central serous chorioretinopathy using two-stage multimodal transfer learning

Central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC), characterized by serous detachment of the macular retina, can cause permanent vision loss in the chronic course. Chronic CSC is generally treated with photodynamic therapy (PDT), which is costly and quite invasive, and the results are unpredictable. In a retrospective case–control study design, we developed a two-stage deep learning model to predict 1-year outcome of PDT using initial multimodal clinical data. The training dataset included 166 eyes with chronic CSC and an additional learning dataset containing 745 healthy control eyes. A pre-trained ResNet50-based convolutional neural network was first trained with normal fundus photographs (FPs) to detect CSC and then adapted to predict CSC treatability through transfer learning. The domain-specific ResNet50 successfully predicted treatable and refractory CSC (accuracy, 83.9%). Then other multimodal clinical data were integrated with the FP deep features using XGBoost.The final combined model (DeepPDT-Net) outperformed the domain-specific ResNet50 (accuracy, 88.0%). The FP deep features had the greatest impact on DeepPDT-Net performance, followed by central foveal thickness and age. In conclusion, DeepPDT-Net could solve the PDT outcome prediction task challenging even to retinal specialists. This two-stage strategy, adopting transfer learning and concatenating multimodal data, can overcome the clinical prediction obstacles arising from insufficient datasets.