Authors:
Joaquim de Moura
1
;
Jorge Novo
1
;
Marcos Ortega
1
;
Noelia Barreira
1
and
Pablo Charlón
2
Affiliations:
1
Universidade da Coruña, Spain
;
2
Instituto Oftalmológico Victoria de Rojas, Spain
Keyword(s):
Retinal Imaging, Vascular Tree, Segmentation, Artery/vein Classification.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications and Services
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Features Extraction
;
Image and Video Analysis
;
Medical Image Applications
;
Segmentation and Grouping
Abstract:
Alterations in the retinal microcirculation are signs of relevant diseases such as hypertension, arteriosclerosis,
or diabetes. Specifically, arterial constriction and narrowing were associated with early stages of hypertension.
Moreover, retinal vasculature abnormalities may be useful indicators for cerebrovascular and cardiovascular
diseases. The Arterio-Venous Ratio (AVR), that measures the relation between arteries and veins, is one
of the most referenced ways of quantifying the changes in the retinal vessel tree. Since these alterations
affect differently arteries and veins, a precise characterization of both types of vessels is a key issue in the
development of automatic diagnosis systems. In this work, we propose a methodology for the automatic
vessel classification between arteries and veins in eye fundus images. The proposal was tested and validated
with 19 near-infrared reflectance retinographies. The methodology provided satisfactory results, in a complex
domain as is the
retinal vessel tree identification and classification.
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