Authors:
Jan Kubicek
1
;
Juraj Timkovic
2
;
Marek Penhaker
1
;
David Oczka
1
;
Alice Krestanova
1
;
Martin Augustynek
1
and
Martin Cerny
1
Affiliations:
1
VSB–Technical University of Ostrava, FEECS, K450, 17 listopadu 15, 708 33, Ostrava–Poruba, Czech Republic
;
2
Clinic of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Ostrava, Czech Republic
Keyword(s):
Retinal Blood Vessels, RetCam 3, Sobel Operator, Fuzzy, Image Edge.
Abstract:
In the clinical ophthalmology, the retinal blood vessels processing represent a significant issue regarding the clinical diagnosis. A level of the blood vessels curvature may serve as a reliable indicator of the pathological process. For curvature estimation, a precise model of the retinal blood vessels is necessary. In this paper, we propose a method based on the sensitive edge detector utilizing the fuzzy rules and morphological techniques. The fuzzy edge detector is able to even detect edges while suppressing the high frequency image noise in the non-contrast environment where the image spatial characteristics are weak. Consequent morphological operations serve for adjustment of the segmentation procedure to obtain the smooth model which effectively separates the retinal blood vessels from the retinal background. In the final step, we obtain the binary mathematical model of the retinal blood vessels. We have verified the proposed method against the gold standard images. We have ap
plied the proposed solution on the low-contrast retinal data from the RetCam 3 which is standard for Retinopathy of prematurity. Mostly, when using the RetCam 3, the retinal data has lower contrast therefore, the segmentation procedure is supposed to be robust, even in the noisy environment.
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