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Precise segmentation of the bulbar conjunctiva for hyperaemia images

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Abstract

Hyperaemia is an excess of blood in a tissue that causes the appearance of an unusual red hue in the affected area. It is a common occurrence in the bulbar conjunctiva, where it can be related to multiple pathologies, such as conjunctivitis or dry eye syndrome. Specialists grade hyperaemia by means of a tedious, subjective, non-repeatable and time-consuming process. These drawbacks can be solved with the automatisation of the process by means of image processing techniques. The automatic segmentation of the conjunctiva is an important part of the process, as it ensures the absence of noise in posterior stages of the methodology. However, there are several issues of illumination and focus in the input videos that difficult the process. In this work, several segmentation algorithms are proposed and compared in order to obtain an accurate location of the bulbar conjunctiva.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. VARPA Group, Department of Computer Science, University of A Coruna, Campus de Elviña s/n, 15071, A Coruña, Spain

    Luisa Sánchez Brea & Noelia Barreira Rodríguez

  2. Artificial Vision Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Santiago de Compostela, C/ Joaquín Díaz de Rábago s/n (Campus Sur), 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Antonio Mosquera González

  3. Optometry Group, Department of Applied Physics, University of Santiago de Compostela, Edificio Monte da Condesa s/n (Campus Sur), 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Hugo Pena-Verdeal & Eva Yebra-Pimentel Vilar

Authors
  1. Luisa Sánchez Brea
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  2. Noelia Barreira Rodríguez
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  3. Antonio Mosquera González
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  4. Hugo Pena-Verdeal
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  5. Eva Yebra-Pimentel Vilar
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Correspondence to Luisa Sánchez Brea.

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Sánchez Brea, L., Barreira Rodríguez, N., Mosquera González, A. et al. Precise segmentation of the bulbar conjunctiva for hyperaemia images. Pattern Anal Applic 21, 563–577 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10044-017-0658-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10044-017-0658-z

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