Automatic detection of the optic disc using majority voting in a collection of optic disc detectors

This paper proposes an efficient method for locating the optic disc in retinal images automatically using majority voting scheme and data fusion. We show that instead of inventing a new algorithm which ends up being a minor variation on an old idea, the fusion of different optic disc (OD) detectors can enhance the overall performance of the detection system. The optic disc centre candidates of different optic disc detectors are marked in the image and a circular template is fit on each pixel in the image to count the outputs of these algorithms that fall within the radius. The location with maximum number of optic disc centre candidates is the hotspot and is used to localize the optic disc centre. An assessment of the performance of the combined optic disc detector versus detectors working separately is also presented. Our method achieved highest performance (overall 100% correct detection).