Vessel Inscribed Trigonometry to Measure the Vessel Progressive Orientations in the Digital Fundus Image

In this paper, the vessel inscribed trigonometry (VITM) for the vessel progression orientation (VPO) is proposed in the two-dimensional fundus image. The VPO is a major factor in the optic disc (OD) detection which is a basic process in the retina analysis. To measure the VPO, skeletons of vessel are used. First, the vessels are classified into three classes as vessel end, vessel branch and vessel stem. And the chain code maps of VS are generated. Next, two farthest neighborhoods of each point on VS are searched by the proposed angle restriction. Lastly, a gradient of the straight line between two farthest neighborhoods is estimated to measure the VPO. VITM is validated by comparing with manual results and 2D Gaussian templates. It is confirmed that VPO of the proposed mensuration is correct enough to detect OD from the results of experiment which applied VITM to detect OD in fundus images.





References:
[1] J.R.Douglas, GLAUCOMA , Mc Graw Hill, 2003.
[2] F. Haar, "Automatic localization of the optic disc in digital colour images
of the human retina," M.S. thesis, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The
Netherlands, 2005.
[3] M.Foracchia, E.Grisan, and A.Ruggeri, "Detection of optic disc in retinal
images by means of a geometrical model of vessel structure," IEEE Trans.
Med. Imag., Vol.23, No.10, pp.1189- 1195, 2004.
[4] A.Youssif, A.Ghalwash, and A.Ghoneim, "Optic Disc Detection From
Normalized Digital Fundus Images by Means of a Vessels- Direction
Matched Filter" IEEE Trans. Med. Imag.,Vol.27,No.1, pp.11-19, 2008.
[5] C. G. Rafael, E. W. Richard, Digital Image Processing, Prentice Hall,
2002.
[6] STARE ProjectWebsite Clemson Univ., Clemson, SC (Online).
Available: http://www.ces.clemson.edu~ahoover/stare