Title :
Measurement of vessel width in retinal fundus images of preterm infants with plus disease
Author :
Oloumi, Faraz ; Rangayyan, Rangaraj M. ; Ells, Anna L.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
Abstract :
Changes in retinal vessel width can be indicative of the presence of several diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy, retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), and hypertension. Accurate detection and measurement of such changes could help in computer-aided diagnosis. An increase in venular thickness is a sign of plus disease, which warrants treatment of ROP. We present image processing methods for detection, tracking, and measurement of the width of the major temporal arcade (MTA), which is the thickest branch of the venular vessels, in retinal fundus images of preterm infants. The methods include the use of Gabor filters for the detection of the blood vessels, as well as morphological image processing for tracking and measurement of the width of the MTA. The results indicate a statistically significant difference in vessel width of normal cases as compared to cases diagnosed with plus disease (p = 0.015).
Keywords :
Gabor filters; biomedical optical imaging; blood vessels; diseases; eye; medical image processing; object detection; object tracking; paediatrics; thickness measurement; Gabor filters; MTA; ROP; blood vessel detection; computer-aided diagnosis; diabetic retinopathy; hypertension; image processing method; major temporal arcade; morphological image processing; plus disease; preterm infants; retinal fundus images; retinal vessel width; retinopathy of prematurity; venular thickness; venular vessels; vessel width measurement; width detection; width tracking; Databases; Diabetes; Diseases; Retinal vessels; Retinopathy; Skeleton;
Conference_Titel :
Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2014 IEEE International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Lisboa
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4799-2920-7
DOI :
10.1109/MeMeA.2014.6860082
