This paper proposes a novel system for the automatic detection of important anatomical structures such as the Optic Disc (OD), Blood Vessels and Macula in digital fundus retinal images. The novelty is in extraction of blood vessels and localization of macula. OD localization is done using Principle Component Analysis (PCA) followed by an active contour based approach for accurate segmentation of its boundary. A morphology based approach is proposed for Blood Vessel Detection (BVD). Macula is identified by combining BVD with the property that it is the darkest area in the vicinity of OD. The proposed method is tested on a set of 100 images and the results demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed system.
Anantha Vidya Sagar, S. Balasubramanian, V. Chandr