Automatic detection of the macula in the retinal fundus image by detecting regions with low pixel intensity

Author

Tan, N.M. ; Wong, D.W.K. ; Liu, J. ; Ng, W.J. ; Zhang, Z. ; Lim, J.H. ; Tan, Z. ; Tang, Y. ; Li, H. ; Lu, S. ; Wong, T.Y.

Author_Institution

Inst. for Infocomm Res., A*STAR, Singapore, Singapore

fYear

2009

fDate

2-4 Dec. 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

5

Abstract

This paper proposes a method to detect the macula in the retinal fundus image automatically. The method makes use of the optic disc height obtained from the ARGALI to define the region of interest. Regions of dark spots are then detected by finding the coordinates with the lowest pixel intensity and determining the average pixel neighbourhood intensities. These regions are ranked to determine the region containing the macula. This algorithm was tested on 162 images, and an accuracy of 98.8% was achieved. The results are promising for further development and use of this method in AMD studies and physiology localization.

Keywords

eye; image classification; medical image processing; automatic detection; average pixel neighbourhood intensity; low-pixel intensity; macula; optic disc height; physiology localization; retinal fundus image; Blindness; Head; Image color analysis; Optical losses; Photoreceptors; Physiology; Pigmentation; Pixel; Retina; Testing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Engineering, 2009. ICBPE '09. International Conference on

Conference_Location

Singapore

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4763-3

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4764-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICBPE.2009.5384075

Filename

5384075