Ultrafast Localization of the Optic Disc Using Dimensionality Reduction of the Search Space

  • Authors:
  • Ahmed Essam Mahfouz;Ahmed S. Fahmy

  • Affiliations:
  • Center for Informatics Science (CIS), Nile University (NU), Cairo, Egypt;Center for Informatics Science (CIS), Nile University (NU), Cairo, Egypt

  • Venue:
  • MICCAI '09 Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention: Part II
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Optic Disc (OD) localization is an important pre-processing step that significantly simplifies subsequent segmentation of the OD and other retinal structures. Current OD localization techniques suffer from impractically-high computation times (few minutes/image ). In this work, we present an ultrafast technique that requiresless than a second to localize the OD. The technique is based on reducing the dimensionality of the search space by projecting the 2D image feature space onto two orthogonal (x- and y-) axes. This results in two 1D signals that can be used to determine the x- and y- coordinates of the OD. Image features such as retinal vessels orientation and the OD brightness and shape are used in the current method. Four publicly-available databases, including STARE and DRIVE, were used to evaluate the proposed technique. The OD was successfully located in 330 images out of 340 images (97%) with an average computation time of 0.65 seconds.