Figure 2.

(a) Flowchart of this work. (b) Choice of growing directions of forming pathway. One of the points labeled by red dots closest to the steepest decent direction was selected to be next to the blue point, which belongs to the forming pathway. (c) Formed pathway network under total potential field, where R, and E1, E2, E3, E4 represent root point and four sampled end points, respectively. Note that steepest direction often leads to a straight-line pathway. (d) Straight and sharp folding pathways smoothed by parametric fitting curves. (e) Spreading of pathway network using Gaussian spots to mimic capillaries seen in real OCT images. (f) Random truncation of pathway network. (g) Layout of augmented target volumetric images used for training deep learning model for assessment.