Fuzzy convergence

This work considers the problem of discovering areas of convergence of line-like shapes in an image. The motivating application is to use the convergence of the blood vessel network to automatically locate the optic nerve in an ocular fundus image. A fuzzy segment model is proposed, based on a conjecture that line-like shapes only contribute to a perception of convergence in their near neighborhood. Using this model, a voting-type method is described to compute a convergence image, which can be searched for one absolute, or one or more relative, strongest points of convergence. Results are presented for twenty ocular fundus images, with a 65% success rate for finding the optic nerve