Optic disc and optic cup segmentation in retinal images

Abstract

Automated segmentation of the optic disc (OD) and optic cup (OC) is important for retinal image analysis and retinal diabetic retinopathy systems. For OD segmentation, this paper presents a method done in three steps that combines variance and brightness features of the OD to localise leading to increased accuracy in detecting OD rather than using just one feature. As a first step, the image is divided into non-over lapping windows. Then the brightest window with maximum variance in intensity is selected. Subsequently the circular Hough transform (CHT) is applied to get the OD segmentation. OC segmentation is done in two steps: 1) blood vessels inside the OD are eliminated and; 2) restricted region growing performed to get the OC segmentation. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated using the standard benchmark DRIVE and DIARETDB1 databases and by comparing the results of proposed method and some methods in silico.