A Fovea Localization Scheme Using Vessel Origin-Based Parabolic Model

Algorithms

Chun-Yuan Yu¹  Chen-Chung Liu² 

[1] Department of Digital Living Innovation, Nan Kai University of Technology, 568, Chung-Cheng Rd., TsaoTun 542, Nantou County, Taiwan; E-Mail:;Department of Electronic Engineering, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, 35, Lane 215, Sec. 1, Chung-Shan Rd., Taiping, Taichung 411, Taiwan; E-Mail:

关键词: vessel origin;    vessel segmentation;    parabolic model;    fovea;    Hough transform;    feature selection;   

DOI  :  10.3390/a7030456

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

At the center of the macula, fovea plays an important role in computer-aided diagnosis. To locate the fovea, this paper proposes a vessel origin (VO)-based parabolic model, which takes the VO as the vertex of the parabola-like vasculature. Image processing steps are applied to accurately locate the fovea on retinal images. Firstly, morphological gradient and the circular Hough transform are used to find the optic disc. The structure of the vessel is then segmented with the line detector. Based on the characteristics of the VO, four features of VO are extracted, following the Bayesian classification procedure. Once the VO is identified, the VO-based parabolic model will locate the fovea. To find the fittest parabola and the symmetry axis of the retinal vessel, an Shift and Rotation (SR)-Hough transform that combines the Hough transform with the shift and rotation of coordinates is presented. Two public databases of retinal images, DRIVE and STARE, are used to evaluate the proposed method. The experiment results show that the average Euclidean distances between the located fovea and the fovea marked by experts in two databases are 9.8 pixels and 30.7 pixels, respectively. The results are stronger than other methods and thus provide a better macular detection for further disease discovery.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.