ArticleGraefe's archive for clinical and experimental ophthalmology = Albrecht von Graefes Archiv fur klinische und experimentelle Ophthalmologie2024
An automated process for bulk downloading optical coherence tomography scans.
Article in Graefe's archive for clinical and experimental ophthalmology = Albrecht von Graefes Archiv fur klinische und experimentelle Ophthalmologie, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
objectiveTo develop an automated method for efficiently downloading a large number of optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans obtained using the Heidelberg Spectralis (Heidelberg Engineering, Heidelberg, Germany) platform.
methodsThe electronic medical records and OCT scans were extracted for all patients with age-related macular degeneration treated at the Hadassah University Hospital Retina Clinic between 2010 and 2021. A macro was created using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and Microsoft Excel to automate the export process and anonymize the OCT scans in accordance with hospital policy. OCT scans were extracted as proprietary Heidelberg E2E files.
resultsThe VBA macro was used to export a total of 94,789 E2E files from 2807 patient records, with an average processing time of 4.32 min per volume scan (SD: 3.57 min). The entire export process took a total of approximately 202 h to complete over a period of 24 days. In a smaller sample, using the macro to download the scans was significantly faster than manually downloading the scans, averaging 3.88 vs. 11.08 min/file, respectively (t = 8.59, p < 0.001). Finally, we found that exporting the files during both off-clinic and working hours resulted in significantly faster processing times compared to exporting the files solely during working hours (t = 5.77, p < 0.001).
conclusionsThis study demonstrates the feasibility of using VBA and Excel to automate the process for bulk downloading data from a specific medical imaging platform. The specific steps and techniques will likely vary depending on the software used and hospital constraints and should be determined for each application.
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