Segmentation of blood vessels in retinal images

This project focuses on blood vessel segmentation in retinal images by employing spatial filtering and color domain processing.

The morphology of blood vessels in retinal fundus images is an important indicator of diseases like glaucoma, hypertension and diabetic retinopathy. The accuracy of retinal blood vessels segmentation affects the quality of retinal image analysis which is used in diagnosis methods in modern ophthalmology. Contrast enhancement is one of the crucial steps in any of retinal blood vessel segmentation approaches. The reliability of the segmentation depends on the consistency of the contrast over the image.

Retinal vessel segmentation and delineation of morphological attributes of retinal blood vessels, such as length, width, tortuosity, branching patterns and angles are utilized for the diagnosis, screening, treatment, and evaluation of various cardiovascular and ophthalmologic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, arteriosclerosis and chorodial neovascularization. Automatic detection and analysis of the vasculature can assist in the implementation of screening programs for diabetic retinopathy, can aid research on the relationship between vessel tortuosity and hypertensive retinopathy, vessel diameter measurement in relation with diagnosis of hypertension, and computer-assisted laser surgery. Automatic generation of retinal maps and extraction of branch points have been used for temporal or multimodal image registration and retinal image mosaic synthesis. Moreover, the retinal vascular tree is found to be unique for each individual and can be used for biometric identification.