A Semi-supervised Reinforcement Learning Framework Incorporating the Multi-scale IncepMambaNet Network for Glaucoma Progression Prediction

Abstract: Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. Currently, artificial intelligence (AI) technology combined with optical coherence tomography (OCT) and visual field testing is widely used for glaucoma progression prediction. However, the lack of labeled patient data and the ambiguity of structural differences in glaucoma remain major research bottlenecks. To address this, this paper proposes a glaucoma progression prediction method based on a semi-supervised reinforcement learning (SSRL) framework. In the SSRL framework, we design a key experience filtering strategy (KEFS) that prioritizes high-value training samples to enhance the model’s generalization ability and optimize the quality of pseudo-labels. Additionally, an entropy regularization technique is introduced to encourage high-entropy distributions, preventing the model from prematurely converging to specific decisions and improving its ability to explore unlabeled data. To adapt the classifier and the pseudo-label generator within the SSRL framework, we innovatively propose the IncepMambaNet multi-scale network. This network integrates the visual state space (VSS) module from the VMamba model with traditional CNN structures, designing a four-branch IncepMamba module that leverages the strengths of both approaches. Experimental results demonstrate that compared to traditional supervised learning methods, our SSRL model effectively improves the performance of various state-of-the-art (SOTA) supervised classification networks. Furthermore, compared to various SOTA classification networks, IncepMambaNet achieves leading performance in three key metrics-macro-F1, F2-score, and AUC-by 0.8%, 8.8%, and 0.9%, respectively, showcasing outstanding feature capture capability and generalization performance. Ablation studies further confirm that the multi-branch structure and channel reordering operations play a crucial role in enhancing model performance.