Automatic segmentation and area calculation of optic disc in ophthalmic images

The diseases related to eye such as glaucoma, retinopathy etc. are mostly detected at the later stages when there is very little scope of treatment. This is because the symptoms presented by these diseases are not significant until the disease at some advanced level. So there is a need of regular and less time consuming diagnosis of the eye. The diagnosis can be done by observing the shape and other characteristics of the different parts of the retinal image; optic disc is the important one. This paper presents a technique to automatically segment the optic disc from retinal images of any size. This technique preserves the shape of the disc after carefully removing the blood vessels. Also, the area of the optic disc is calculated.