Publication

Abstract : Efficient Optic Disc(OD) detection and segmentation is an essential element in the design of any automated retinal image analysis system. The detection of OD is often challenging due to the uneven illumination and lack of a definite OD boundary which is further complicated in infant retinal images due to their low quality. In this paper, a method for efficient localization and segmentation of OD in infant fundus images is proposed utilizing the commonly occurring double ring structure in the OD of premature infants. A method to assign an OD score to each pixel position is proposed which corresponds to the likelihood that the pixel belongs to the OD area, thus highlighting the possible locations of OD. The real location of OD is finalized after post-processing, and then the OD shape is segmented using a single seed region growing. The proposed method is extremely robust to the variations in the quality of the infant fundus images with 98.1% accuracy in locating the OD when tested on 317 infant fundus images of varying quality.