title: Blood vessel segmentation and width estimation in ultra-wide field scanning laser ophthalmoscopy.
abstract: Features of the retinal vasculature, such as vessel widths, are considered biomarkers for systemic disease. The aim of this work is to present a supervised approach to vessel segmentation in ultra-wide field of view scanning laser ophthalmoscope (UWFoV SLO) images and to evaluate its performance in terms of segmentation and vessel width estimation accuracy. The results of the proposed method are compared with ground truth measurements from human observers and with existing state-of-the-art techniques developed for fundus camera images that we optimized for UWFoV SLO images. Our algorithm is based on multi-scale matched filters, a neural network classifier and hysteresis thresholding. After spline-based refinement of the detected vessel contours, the vessel widths are estimated from the binary maps. Such analysis is performed on SLO images for the first time. The proposed method achieves the best results, both in vessel segmentation and in width estimation, in comparison to other automatic techniques.
authors.affiliation: VAMPIRE Project, School of Computing, University of Dundee, DD1 4HN. UK.
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pellegrini
authors.affiliation: VAMPIRE Project, Centre for Clinical Brain Science, University of Edinburgh, EH16 4TJ, UK.
authors.forename: Gavin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Robertson
authors.affiliation: VAMPIRE Project, School of Computing, University of Dundee, DD1 4HN. UK.
authors.forename: Emanuele
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Trucco
authors.affiliation: VAMPIRE Project, Centre for Clinical Brain Science, University of Edinburgh, EH16 4TJ, UK ; Clinical Research Imaging Centre, University of Edinburgh, EH16 4TJ, UK ; Clinical Research Facility, University of Edinburgh, EH4 2XU, UK.
authors.forename: Tom J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: MacGillivray
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90123, Italy.
authors.forename: Carmen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lupascu
authors.affiliation: Optos plc, Dunfermline, KY11 8GR, UK.
authors.forename: Jano
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: van Hemert
authors.affiliation: University of Edinburgh/British Heart Foundation Centre for Cardiovascular Science, EH16 4TJ, UK.
authors.forename: Michelle C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: University of Edinburgh/British Heart Foundation Centre for Cardiovascular Science, EH16 4TJ, UK.
authors.forename: David E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Newby
authors.affiliation: Clinical Research Imaging Centre, University of Edinburgh, EH16 4TJ, UK.
authors.forename: Edwin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: van Beek
authors.affiliation: Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, University of Dundee, DD1 9SY, UK.
authors.forename: Graeme
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Houston
keywords: (100.2960) Image analysis; (100.3008) Image recognition, algorithms and filters; (100.4996) Pattern recognition, neural networks; (170.4470) Ophthalmology