title: Detection of blood vessels in fundus images of the retina using Gabor wavelets.
abstract: The monitoring of the effects of diabetes, hypertension, and premature birth on the visual system can be assisted by quantitative analysis of the vascular architecture of the retina. The application of image analysis techniques in ophthalmology becomes possible after the desired features have been detected through the use of an appropriate method. We propose image processing techniques for the detection of blood vessels in the retina. The methods include the design of a bank of directionally sensitive Gabor filters for several values of the scale and elongation parameters. Forty images of the retina from the DRIVE database were used to evaluate the performance of the methods. High efficiency in the detection of blood vessels with the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of up to 0.96 was achieved.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 1N4.
authors.forename: Faraz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Oloumi
authors.forename: Rangaraj M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Rangayyan
authors.forename: Foad
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Oloumi
authors.forename: Peyman
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Eshghzadeh-Zanjani
authors.forename: Fabio J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Ayres
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D012164:Retinal Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology; D012171:Retinal Vessels / Q000473:pathology*