Retinal Blood Vessels Modeling based on Fuzzy Sobel Edge Detection and Morphological Segmentation

Jan Kubicek, Juraj Timkovic, Marek Penhaker, David Oczka, Alice Krestanova, Martin Augustynek, Martin Cerny

2019

Abstract

In the clinical ophthalmology, the retinal blood vessels processing represent a significant issue regarding the clinical diagnosis. A level of the blood vessels curvature may serve as a reliable indicator of the pathological process. For curvature estimation, a precise model of the retinal blood vessels is necessary. In this paper, we propose a method based on the sensitive edge detector utilizing the fuzzy rules and morphological techniques. The fuzzy edge detector is able to even detect edges while suppressing the high frequency image noise in the non-contrast environment where the image spatial characteristics are weak. Consequent morphological operations serve for adjustment of the segmentation procedure to obtain the smooth model which effectively separates the retinal blood vessels from the retinal background. In the final step, we obtain the binary mathematical model of the retinal blood vessels. We have verified the proposed method against the gold standard images. We have applied the proposed solution on the low-contrast retinal data from the RetCam 3 which is standard for Retinopathy of prematurity. Mostly, when using the RetCam 3, the retinal data has lower contrast therefore, the segmentation procedure is supposed to be robust, even in the noisy environment.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Kubicek J., Timkovic J., Penhaker M., Oczka D., Krestanova A., Augustynek M. and Cerny M. (2019). Retinal Blood Vessels Modeling based on Fuzzy Sobel Edge Detection and Morphological Segmentation. In Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2019) - Volume 1: BIODEVICES; ISBN 978-989-758-353-7, SciTePress, pages 121-126. DOI: 10.5220/0007237501210126

in Bibtex Style

@conference{biodevices19,
author={Jan Kubicek and Juraj Timkovic and Marek Penhaker and David Oczka and Alice Krestanova and Martin Augustynek and Martin Cerny},
title={Retinal Blood Vessels Modeling based on Fuzzy Sobel Edge Detection and Morphological Segmentation},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2019) - Volume 1: BIODEVICES},
year={2019},
pages={121-126},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007237501210126},
isbn={978-989-758-353-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2019) - Volume 1: BIODEVICES
TI - Retinal Blood Vessels Modeling based on Fuzzy Sobel Edge Detection and Morphological Segmentation
SN - 978-989-758-353-7
AU - Kubicek J.
AU - Timkovic J.
AU - Penhaker M.
AU - Oczka D.
AU - Krestanova A.
AU - Augustynek M.
AU - Cerny M.
PY - 2019
SP - 121
EP - 126
DO - 10.5220/0007237501210126
PB - SciTePress