Optic disc detection from normalized digital fundus images by means of a vessels' direction matched filter

Optic disc (OD) detection is a main step while developing automated screening systems for diabetic retinopathy. We present in this paper a method to automatically detect the position of the OD in digital retinal fundus images. The method starts by normalizing luminosity and contrast through out the image using illumination equalization and adaptive histogram equalization methods respectively. The OD detection algorithm is based on matching the expected directional pattern of the retinal blood vessels. Hence, a simple matched filter is proposed to roughly match the direction of the vessels at the OD vicinity. The retinal vessels are segmented using a simple and standard 2-D Gaussian matched filter. Consequently, a vessels direction map of the segmented retinal vessels is obtained using the same segmentation algorithm. The segmented vessels are then thinned, and filtered using local intensity, to represent finally the OD-center candidates. The difference between the proposed matched filter resized into four different sizes, and the vessels' directions at the surrounding area of each of the OD-center candidates is measured. The minimum difference provides an estimate of the OD-center coordinates. The proposed method was evaluated using a subset of the STARE project's dataset, containing 81 fundus images of both normal and diseased retinas, and initially used by literature OD detection methods. The OD-center was detected correctly in 80 out of the 81 images (98.77%). In addition, the OD-center was detected correctly in all of the 40 images (100%) using the publicly available DRIVE dataset.     

A successive clutter-rejection-based approach for early detection of diabetic retinopathy

The presence of microaneurysms (MAs) is usually an early sign of diabetic retinopathy and their automatic detection from color retinal images is of clinical interest. In this paper, we present a new approach for automatic MA detection from digital color fundus images. We formulate MA detection as a problem of target detection from clutter, where the probability of occurrence of target is considerably smaller compared to the clutter. A successive rejection-based strategy is proposed to progressively lower the number of clutter responses. The processing stages are designed to reject specific classes of clutter while passing majority of true MAs, using a set of specialized features. The true positives that remain after the final rejector are assigned a score which is based on its similarity to a true MA. Results of extensive evaluation of the proposed approach on three different retinal image datasets are reported, and used to highlight the promise in the presented strategy.     

采用三层窗口局部对比度的红外小目标检测

在红外制导、预警等领域，高检测率、低虚警率和高实时性地检测出红外小目标具有重大的理论和实际意义。提出了一种采用三层窗口局部对比度的红外小目标检测方法，该三层窗口可以通过单尺度计算解决不同尺度小目标的检测难题，提高检测的实时性。同时，通过在对比度计算前、对比度计算中和对比度计算后等环节中分别对真实目标进行增强、对复杂背景进行抑制，实现提高检测率、降低虚警率的目的。在若干红外序列和图像中进行实验验证表明，相比8种现有算法而言，该方法可以取得更好的检测率和虚警率，其平均耗时仅为某些多尺度算法的1/3~1/2左右。     

On the adaptive detection of blood vessels in retinal images

This paper proposes an automated blood vessel detection scheme based on adaptive contrast enhancement, feature extraction, and tracing. Feature extraction of small blood vessels is performed by using the standard deviation of Gabor filter responses. Tracing of vessels is done via forward detection, bifurcation identification, and backward verification. Tests over twenty images show that for normal images, the true positive rate (TPR) ranges from 80% to 91%, and their corresponding false positive rates (FPR) range from 2.8% to 5.5%. For abnormal images, the TPR ranges from 73.8% to 86.5% and the FPR ranges from 2.1% to 5.3%, respectively. In comparison with two published solution schemes that were also based on the STARE database, our scheme has lower FPR for the reported TPR measure.     

Weighted local variance-based edge detection and its application to vascular segmentation in magnetic resonance angiography

Accurate detection of vessel boundaries is particularly important for a precise extraction of vasculatures in magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). In this paper, we propose the use of weighted local variance (WLV)-based edge detection scheme for vessel boundary detection in MRA. The proposed method is robust against changes of intensity contrast of edges and capable of giving high detection responses on low contrast edges. These robustness and capabilities are essential for detecting the boundaries of vessels in low contrast regions of images, which can contain intensity inhomogeneity, such as bias field, interferences induced from other tissues, or fluctuation of the speed related vessel intensity. The performance of the WLV-based edge detection scheme is studied and shown to be able to return strong and consistent detection responses on low contrast edges in the experiments. The proposed edge detection scheme can be embedded naturally in the active contour models for vascular segmentation. The WLV-based vascular segmentation method is tested using MRA image volumes. It is experimentally shown that the WLV-based edge detection approach can achieve high-quality segmentation of vasculatures in MRA images.     

Robust simultaneous detection of coronary borders in complex images

Visual estimation of coronary obstruction severity from angiograms suffers from poor inter- and intraobserver reproducibility and is often inaccurate. In spite of the widely recognized limitations of visual analysis, automated methods have not found widespread clinical use, in part because they too frequently fail to accurately identify vessel borders. The authors have developed a robust method for simultaneous detection of left and right coronary borders that is suitable for analysis of complex images with poor contrast, nearby or overlapping structures, or branching vessels. The reliability of the simultaneous border detection method and that of the authors' previously reported conventional border detection method were tested in 130 complex images, selected because conventional automated border detection might be expected to fail. Conventional analysis failed to yield acceptable borders in 65/130 or 50% of images. Simultaneous border detection was much more robust (p<.001) and failed in only 15/130 or 12% of complex images. Simultaneous border detection identified stenosis diameters that correlated significantly better with observer-derived stenosis diameters than did diameters obtained with conventional border detection (p<0.001), Simultaneous detection of left and right coronary borders is highly robust and has substantial promise for enhancing the utility of quantitative coronary angiography in the clinical setting.     

红外序列图像弱小目标检测算法

红外图像中的弱小目标因为信噪比和对比度较低,用单帧图像检测很难得到满意的效果,利用多帧图像信息进行检测是有效的手段之一。分析了利用帧间相关性对红外图像中的弱小目标进行检测的方法,提出了改进的算法和对比度相关性的概念。该算法在序列图像灰度起伏情况下,克服了直接利用灰度相关效果不好的缺点,具有良好的抗噪声和背景干扰的特点。算法可以推广到其他类型图像目标的检测中。     

Linear structures in mammographic images: detection and classification

We describe methods for detecting linear structures in mammograms, and for classifying them into anatomical types (vessels, spicules, ducts, etc). Several different detection methods are compared, using realistic synthetic images and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. There are significant differences (p < 0.001) between the methods, with the best giving an Az value for pixel-level detection of 0.943. We also investigate methods for classifying the detected linear structures into anatomical types, using their cross-sectional profiles, with particular emphasis on recognising the "spicules" and "ducts" associated with some of the more subtle abnormalities. Automatic classification results are compared with expert annotations using ROC analysis, demonstrating useful discrimination between anatomical classes (Az = 0.746). Some of this discrimination relies on simple attributes such as profile width and contrast, but important information is also carried by the shape of the profile (Az = 0.653). The methods presented have potentially wide application in improving the specificity of abnormality detection by exploiting additional anatomical information.     

Locating the optic nerve in a retinal image using the fuzzy convergence of the blood vessels

We describe an automated method to locate the optic nerve in images of the ocular fundus. Our method uses a novel algorithm we call fuzzy convergence to determine the origination of the blood vessel network. We evaluate our method using 31 images of healthy retinas and 50 images of diseased retinas, containing such diverse symptoms as tortuous vessels, choroidal neovascularization, and hemorrhages that completely obscure the actual nerve. On this difficult data set, our method achieved 89% correct detection. We also compare our method against three simpler methods, demonstrating the performance improvement. All our images and data are freely available for other researchers to use in evaluating related methods.     

Salient object detection using local,global and high contrast graphs

In this paper, we propose a novel multi-graph-based method for salient object detection in natural images. Starting from image decomposition via a superpixel generation algorithm, we utilize color, spatial and background label to calculate edge weight matrix of the graphs. By considering superpixels as the nodes and region similarities as the edge weights, local, global and high contrast graphs are created. Then, an integration technique is applied to form the saliency maps using degree vectors of the graphs. Extensive experiments on three challenging datasets show that the proposed unsupervised method outperforms the several different state-of-the-art unsupervised methods.     

Improved detection of the central reflex in retinal vessels using a generalized dual-gaussian model and robust hypothesis testing

This updates an earlier publication by the authors describing a robust framework for detecting vasculature in noisy retinal fundus images. We improved the handling of the "central reflex" phenomenon in which a vessel has a "hollow" appearance. This is particularly pronounced in dual-wavelength images acquired at 570 and 600 nm for retinal oximetry. It is prominent in the 600 nm images that are sensitive to the blood oxygen content. Improved segmentation of these vessels is needed to improve oximetry. We show that the use of a generalized dual-Gaussian model for the vessel intensity profile instead of the Gaussian yields a significant improvement. Our method can account for variations in the strength of the central reflex, the relative contrast, width, orientation, scale, and imaging noise. It also enables the classification of regular and central reflex vessels. The proposed method yielded a sensitivity of 72% compared to 38% by the algorithm of Can et al., and 60% by the robust detection based on a single-Gaussian model. The specificity for the methods were 95%, 97%, and 98%, respectively.     

空域加权局部对比度的红外小目标检测算法

针对传统局部对比度算法在强杂波背景下,容易引入虚警目标的不足,提出了一种空域加权局部对比度的红外小目标检测算法。首先,利用具有中心激励和侧向抑制性的二维高斯差分滤波器,抑制了原始图像大部分的背景杂波,以提高图像的信噪比;然后,利用目标均值与邻域的中值的比值进行局部对比度测量,再用目标各区域的灰度均值差加权局部对比度,生成目标显著图;最后,对显著图进行自适应阈值分割,检测出真实目标。实验结果表明,与其他几种检测方法对比,该算法不仅具有较高的信躁比增益和背景抑制因子,还具有较高的检测率和较低的虚警率,是一种有效的红外小目标检测方法。     

采用反向局部多样加权对比度检测的红外小目标检测

具有高检测率、低虚警率和高检测速度的单帧红外弱小目标检测是一项艰巨的任务,因为目标通常很小且暗淡,并且存在不同类型的干扰,例如高亮背景,复杂的背景边缘和高亮度像素级的噪声点（PNHB）。基于HVS的单帧检测算法通常可以实现比传统算法更好的性能,但是,对于基于HVS的算法,如何定义局部对比度的公式是关键问题之一,直接决定算法的性能。到目前为止,研究人员尚未就如何定义局部对比度达成共识,并且已经提出了许多局部对比度定义。现有算法如比值型和差值型的局部对比度算法,不能有效增强真实目标的同时抑制所有干扰,仅以周围区域为背景,而没有考虑周围背景本身的多样性,这些算法浪费了可用于进一步抑制复杂背景的局部多样性信息。提出了一种多尺度比差联合局部对比度检测算法（MRDLCM）。它可以结合比值型和差值型算法的优点,因此可以抑制所有类型干扰的同时增强不同大小的真实目标,且不需要任何预处理。此外,提出了基于反向局部多样性（RLD）的权重函数,该函数利用局部周围区域的局部多样性进一步抑制复杂背景。实验结果表明,所提出的MRDLCM_RLD算法相对于现有算法在检测率和误报率上具有有效性和鲁棒性。此外,该算法具有并行处理能力,对于提高检测速度非常有效。     

Moment-based multi-lane detection and tracking

Lane-detection methods are still facing robustness issues when confronted with challenging road surfaces, road markings and illumination conditions. Such combined challenges occur infrequently but are crucial for driving safety. Although advanced learning-based methods (using deep learning) demonstrate an impressive performance, they rely on plenty of training images for varying scenes and their performance is limited for scenes not covered by the training data. Also, multi-lane detection is indispensable for determining the exact position of both ego-car and surrounding vehicles as well as lane changing behavior on the road. In this paper we propose a new multi-lane detection algorithm, detecting all visible lane boundaries in front of the ego-car. In contrast to the Hough transforms often used for lane boundaries detection, our approach uses moments to calculate the deflection angles and the centroids of lane segments, achieving more precise lane boundaries. We propose a novel algorithm based on moments and Kalman filtering to achieve lane tracking. State-of-the-art neural-network-based methods are compared with the proposed method concretely. Experimental results show that our method outperforms other (recently published) multi-lane detection algorithms regarding detection rate as well as accuracy.     

Detection of blood vessels in retinal images using two-dimensional matched filters

Blood vessels usually have poor local contrast, and the application of existing edge detection algorithms yield results which are not satisfactory. An operator for feature extraction based on the optical and spatial properties of objects to be recognized is introduced. The gray-level profile of the cross section of a blood vessel is approximated by a Gaussian-shaped curve. The concept of matched filter detection of signals is used to detect piecewise linear segments of blood vessels in these images. Twelve different templates that are used to search for vessel segments along all possible directions are constructed. Various issues related to the implementation of these matched filters are discussed. The results are compared to those obtained with other methods.     

Extracting salient region for pornographic image detection

Content-based pornographic image detection, in which region-of-interest (ROI) plays an important role, is effective to filter pornography. Traditionally, skin-color regions are extracted as ROI. However, skin-color regions are always larger than the subareas containing pornographic parts, and the approach is difficult to differentiate between human skins and other objects with the skin-colors. In this paper, a novel approach of extracting salient region is presented for pornographic image detection. At first, a novel saliency map model is constructed. Then it is integrated with a skin-color model and a face detection model to capture ROI in pornographic images. Next, a ROI-based codebook algorithm is proposed to enhance the representative power of visual-words. Taking into account both the speed and the accuracy, we fuse speed up robust features (SURF) with color moments (CM). Experimental results show that the precision of our ROI extraction method averagely achieves 91.33%, more precisely than that of using the skin-color model alone. Besides, the comparison with the state-of-the-art methods of pornographic image detection shows that our approach is able to remarkably improve the performance.     

基于模糊局部信息C均值的太赫兹图像目标检测

为了克服返波管太赫兹连续波成像系统所获取图像存在的对比度低、干涉条纹强等缺陷,较好地区分出目标和背景,避开不规则干涉条纹的干扰,采用基于模糊局部信息C均值的聚类算法用于目标检测,并针对太赫兹图像性质,对其中的隶属度函数进行了改进。结果表明,新的聚类分割算法适用于具有不规则条纹干扰下的太赫兹连续波图像,能较好地提取出图像中的目标,较经典图像聚类算法具有更好的目标检测精度。     

OCT无创血糖检测图像处理最优化方法研究

为了解决不同的光学相干层析(OCT)图像预处理方式对皮肤真皮层散射系数计算影响的问题,提高无创血糖的测量精确度,提出了一种对OCT图像数据前期处理的最优化方法。在对采集的3维图像数据进行皮肤表面对齐、3维重建、1维平均处理的基础上,分析了背景噪声和数据是否归一化对血糖预测精度的影响,并结合临床实验进行了验证。结果表明,预测误差较预处理之前减小了18.31%。该研究对于提高基于OCT技术的光学无创血糖测量精度具有重要的参考价值。     

基于改进加权增强局部对比度测量的红外小目标检测方法

红外弱小目标检测技术是红外搜索与跟踪系统的重要组成部分(IRST)。一般来说,在复杂背景环境下,红外弱小目标检测往往会有高虚警率和低检测率的问题。为了解决这一问题,提出一个改进的加权增强局部对比度测量（IWELCM）检测框架,具有重要意义。首先,通过将局部对比度机制与信杂比(SCR)的计算相结合,提出一个增强的局部对比度测量方法,在增强图像中疑似红外弱小目标区域的同时也提高图像的SCR。其次,通过利用红外图像中弱小目标的特性,以及目标与周围背景的统计差异,提出一个改进的加权函数来进一步增强目标和抑制背景。最后,采用一个自适应阈值分割的方法去获取检测的目标。在不同场景的数据集上的对比实验表明,与七种现有流行的方法相比,提出方法在复杂背景下能够有效地从干扰对象中提取真实的红外弱小目标,具有更好的检测性能。     

一种基于量子机制的图像显著性检测方案

提出了一种与传统方法相比效率更高的量子图像显著性检测方案.为了在量子计算机中表示和存储RGB图像,并计算不同像素间的反差,此方案采用3量子位描述颜色信息,把2轨×2图像矩阵编码为量子叠加态;结合Hadamard门和受控旋转算子,计算基态概率幅可反映像素在RGB三通道上的全局颜色反差;通过有限次数的投影测量可得到像素的归一化颜色反差及位置信息,并构建显著图.给出了相关量子电路的实现和复杂度分析.与多种传统显著性检测算法进行了对比实验,结果表明提出的方案具有良好的检测效果和更高的检测效率.