基于相位一致性的眼底图像视网膜血管分割

眼底图像的视网膜血管分割是眼底图像处理的重要组成部分,视网膜血管对于医学研究和临床诊断有着重要的作用。传统图像分割算法都有一定的缺陷,而相位一致性算法由于不受对亮度和对比度的影响,且有着较好的分割效果,可以用于图像特征的提取和分割。为此提出了将相位一致性算法应用于眼底图像的血管提取中,采用真实的眼底图像数据库进行实践,证明了可较好地用于眼底图像视网膜血管分割。     

Construction and verification of retinal vessel segmentation algorithm for color fundus image under BP neural network model

To improve the accuracy of retinal vessel segmentation, a retinal vessel segmentation algorithm for color fundus images based on back-propagation (BP) neural network is proposed according to the characteristics of retinal blood vessels. Four kinds of green channel image enhancement results of adaptive histogram equalization, morphological processing, Gaussian matched filtering, and Hessian matrix filtering are used to form feature vectors. The BP neural network is input to segment blood vessels. Experiments on the color fundus image libraries DRIVE and STARE show that this algorithm can obtain complete retinal blood vessel segmentation as well as connected vessel stems and terminals. When segmenting most small blood vessels, the average accuracy on the DRIVE library reaches 0.9477, and the average accuracy on the STARE library reaches 0.9498, which has a good segmentation effect. Through verification, the algorithm is feasible and effective for blood vessel segmentation of color fundus images and can detect more capillaries.

     

Computerised approaches for the detection of diabetic retinopathy using retinal fundus images: a survey

Eye-related disease such as diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a medical ailment in which the retina of the human eye is smashed because of damage to the tiny retinal blood vessels in the retina. Ophthalmologists identify DR based on various features such as the blood vessels, textures and pathologies. With the rapid development of methods of analysis of biomedical images and advanced computing techniques, image processing-based software for the detection of eye disease has been widely used as an important tool by ophthalmologists. In particular, computer vision-based methods are growing rapidly in the field of medical images analysis and are appropriate to advance ophthalmology. These tools depend entirely on visual analysis to identify abnormalities in Retinal Fundus images. During the past two decades, exciting improvement in the development of DR detection computerised systems has been observed. This paper reviews the development of analysing retinal images for the detection of DR in three aspects: automatic algorithms (classification or pixel to pixel methods), detection methods of pathologies from retinal fundus images, and extraction of blood vessels of retinal fundus image algorithms for the detection of DR. The paper presents a detailed explanation of each problem with respect to retinal images. The current techniques that are used to analyse retinal images and DR detection issues are also discussed in detail and recommendations are made for some future directions.     

基于双注意力编码-解码器架构的视网膜血管分割

眼底视网膜血管的分割提取对于糖尿病、视网膜病、青光眼等眼科疾病的诊断具有重要的意义。针对视网膜血管图像中的血管难以提取、数据量较少等问题,文中提出了一种结合注意力模块和编码-解码器结构的视网膜血管分割方法。首先对编码-解码器卷积神经网络的每个卷积层添加空间和通道注意力模块,加强模型对图像特征的空间信息和通道信息(如血管的大小、形态和连通性等特点)的利用,从而改善视网膜血管的分割效果。其中,空间注意力模块关注于血管的拓扑结构特性,而通道注意力模块关注于血管像素点的正确分类。此外,在训练过程中采用Dice损失函数解决了视网膜血管图像正负样本不均衡的问题。在3个公开的眼底图像数据库DRIVE,STARE和CHASE_DB1上进行了实验,实验数据表明,所提算法的准确率、灵敏度、特异性和AUC值均优于已有的视网膜血管分割方法,其AUC值分别为0.9889,0.9812和0.9831。实验证明,所提算法能够有效提取健康视网膜图像和病变视网膜图像中的血管网络,能够较好地分割细小血管。     

Retinal vessel segmentation using a probabilistic tracking method

Vessel structures such as retinal vasculature are important features for computer-aided diagnosis. In this paper, a probabilistic tracking method is proposed to detect blood vessels in retinal images. During the tracking process, vessel edge points are detected iteratively using local grey level statistics and vessel's continuity properties. At a given step, a statistic sampling scheme is adopted to select a number of vessel edge points candidates in a local studying area. Local vessel's sectional intensity profiles are estimated by a Gaussian shaped curve. A Bayesian method with the Maximum a posteriori (MAP) probability criterion is then used to identify local vessel's structure and find out the edge points from these candidates. Evaluation is performed on both simulated vascular and real retinal images. Different geometric shapes and noise levels are used for computer simulated images, whereas real retinal images from the REVIEW database are tested. Evaluation performance is done using the Segmentation Matching Factor (SMF) as a quality parameter. Our approach performed better when comparing it with Sun's and Chaudhuri's methods. ROC curves are also plotted, showing effective detection of retinal blood vessels (true positive rate) with less false detection (false positive rate) than Sun's method.     

An improved vessel extraction scheme from retinal fundus images

Vessel extraction from retinal fundus images is essential for the diagnosis of different opthalmologic diseases like glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and hypertension. It is a challenging task due to presence of several noises embedded with thin vessels. In this article, we have proposed an improved vessel extraction scheme from retinal fundus images. First, mathematical morphological operation is performed on each planes of the RGB image to remove the vessels for obtaining noise in the image. Next, the original RGB and vessel removed RGB image are transformed into negative gray scale image. These negative gray scale images are subtracted and finally binarized (BW₁) by leveling the image. It still contains some granular noise which is removed based on the area of connected component. Further, previously detected vessels are replaced in the gray-scale image with mean value of the gray-scale image and then the gray-scale image is enhanced to obtain the thin vessels. Next, the enhanced image is binarized and thin vessels are obtained (BW₂). Finally, the thin vessel image (BW₂) is merged with the previously obtained binary image (BW₁) and finally we obtain the vessel extracted image. To analyze the performance of our proposed method we have experimented on publicly available DRIVE dataset. We have observed that our algorithm have provides satisfactory performance with the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of 0.7260, 0.9802 and 0.9563 respectively which is better than the most of the recent works.

     

Retinal vessel segmentation using enhanced fuzzy min-max neural network

Automated segmentation of retinal vessels plays a pivotal role in early diagnosis of ophthalmic disorders. In this paper, a blood vessel segmentation algorithm using an enhanced fuzzy min-max neural network supervised classifier is proposed. The input to the network is an optimal 11-D feature vector which consists of spatial as well as frequency domain features extracted from each pixel of a fundus image. The essence of the method is its hyperbox classifier which performs online learning and gives binary output without any need of post-processing. The method is tested on publicly available databases DRIVE and STARE. The results are compared with the existing methods in the literature. The proposed method exhibits efficient performance and can be implemented in computer aided screening and diagnosis of retinal diseases. The method attains an average accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 95.73%, 74.75% and 97.81% on DRIVE database and 95.51%, 74.65% and 97.11% on STARE database, respectively.

     

Blood vessel segmentation of retinal image using Clifford matched filter and Clifford convolution

Multimedia Tools and Applications - The appearance and structure of blood vessels in retinal fundus image is a fundamental part of diagnosing different issues related with such as diabetes and...     

基于不同尺度增强融合的视网膜血管分割算法

针对现有视网膜血管图像提取细小血管准确率较低的问题,提出了一种基于多尺度线性检测器与局部和全局增强相结合的视网膜血管分割方法.对多尺度线检测器进行研究,将其分为小尺度和大尺度两部分;利用小尺度对局部增强后的图像与大尺度对全局增强后的图像分别进行检测,得到不同尺度下的响应函数;将不同尺度下的响应函数进行融合,得到最终的视网膜血管结构.在STARE和DRIVE两个数据库上进行实验,结果表明:该算法得到的平均血管准确率分别达到96.62％和96.45％,平均真阳性率分别达到75.52％和83.07％,分割准确率高,能够得到较好的血管分割结果.     

基于编解码结构的多特征融合眼底图像分割

为解决现有眼底图像分割方法对于细微血管存在低分割精度和低准确率的问题,提出一种基于编解码结构的U-Net改进网络模型。首先对数据进行预处理与扩充,提取绿色通道图像,并将其通过对比度限制直方图均衡化和伽马变换以增强对比度;其次训练集被输入到用于分割的神经网络中,在编码过程加入残差模块,用短跳跃连接将高、低特征信息融合,并利用空洞卷积增加感受野,解码模块加入注意力机制增加对细微血管分割精度;最后利用训练完成的分割模型进行预测得出视网膜血管分割结果。在DRIVE和CHASE-DB1眼底图像数据集上进行对比实验,模型算法的平均准确率、特异性和灵敏度分别达到96.77%和97.22%、98.74%和98.40%、80.93%和81.12%。实验结果表明该算法能够改善微细血管分割准确率及效率不高的问题,对视网膜血管可以进行更准确的分割。     

基于眼底图像层次特征的分类方法

针对眼底图像中视网膜血管结构的划分问题,提出一种自适应的广度优先搜索算法。首先,基于视网膜血管的结构提出层次特征的概念并进行特征提取;然后,对分割的视网膜血管进行分析及处理,提取得到多个无向图子图;最后,使用自适应的广度优先搜索算法对每个子图中的层次特征进行分类。视网膜血管结构的划分问题被转化为层次特征的分类问题,通过对视网膜血管中的层次特征进行分类,包含这些层次特征的视网膜血管段的层次结构就可以被确定,从而实现视网膜血管结构的划分。该算法运用于公开的眼底图像数据库时具有良好的性能。     

改进的形态学与Otsu相结合的视网膜血管分割

针对视网膜图像采集过程中由于疾病引起的图像光照反射过强问题,提出了一种修正的形态学与Otsu相结合的无监督视网膜血管分割算法。首先运用形态学中的高低帽变换增强血管与背景的对比度;然后提出了一种修正方法,消除部分由视网膜疾病引起的光照问题;最后使用Otsu阈值方法分割血管。算法在DRIVE和STARE视网膜图像数据库中进行了测试,实验结果表明,DRIVE数据库中的分割精度为0.9382,STARE数据库中的分割精度为0.9460,算法的执行时间为1.6s。算法能够精确地分割出视网膜血管,与传统的无监督视网膜血管分割算法相比,算法的分割精度高、抗干扰能力强。     

DF-Net: Deep fusion network for multi-source vessel segmentation

Accurate retinal vessel segmentation is very challenging. Recently, the deep learning based method has greatly improved performance. However, the non-vascular structures usually harm the performance and some low contrast small vessels are hard to be detected after several down-sampling operations. To solve these problems, we design a deep fusion network (DF-Net) including multiscale fusion, feature fusion and classifier fusion for multi-source vessel image segmentation. The multiscale fusion module allows the network to detect blood vessels with different scales. The feature fusion module fuses deep features with vessel responses extracted from a Frangi filter to obtain a compact yet domain invariant feature representation. The classifier fusion module provides the network more supervision. DF-Net also predicts the parameter of the Frangi filter to avoid manually picking the best parameters. The learned Frangi filter enhances the feature map of the multiscale network and restores the edge information loss caused by down-sampling operations. The proposed end-to-end network is easy to train and the inference time for one image is 41ms on a GPU. The model outperforms state-of-the-art methods and achieves the accuracy of 96.14%, 97.04%, 98.02% from three publicly available fundus image datasets DRIVE, STARE, CHASEDB1, respectively. The code is available at https://github.com/y406539259/DF-Net.     

基于DWT和形态学的眼底图像小血管检测

针对眼底图像中末端小血管检测难、细节容易丢失的问题．提出一种基于离散小波变换（DWT）和形态学滤波的检测算法。通过小波变换多尺度分析眼底图像小血管系数、背景系数的不同特征．选取分量信号的系数后重构图像。同时以自适应阈值Canny算法提取小血管边缘;然后将结合小血管宽度选择适当结构元素半径,对重构图像进行灰度膨胀,实现小血管检测。结果表明,形态学结合DWT的检测算法能够准确地检测小血管．与常见边缘检测算法相比检测成功率较高。     

Automatic diabetic retinopathy diagnosis using adjustable ophthalmoscope and multi-scale line operator

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), the most common one of diabetic eye diseases that cause loss of vision and blindness, has become one of major health problems today. However, DR can be eased through timely treatment and periodical screening. In this paper, we proposes an automatic diabetic retinopathy diagnostic system to help patients know about their retinal conditions. We design a portable ophthalmoscope, which is composed of a retinal lens, a smartphone and a frame between them to help patients take fundus images anywhere and anytime. Then the images are transmitted to be analyzed, including localization of optic disk and macular, vessel segmentation, detection of lesions, and grading of DR. We use a multi-scale line operator to improve accuracy in segmenting small-scale vessels, a binary mask and image restoration to reduce the effect of the existence of the vessels on optic disk localization. After the analysis, the fundus image are then graded as normal, mild Non-Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy (NPDR), moderate NPDR or severe NPDR. The grading process uses region segmentation to improve the efficiency. The final grading results are tested based on the fundus images provided by the hospitals. We evaluate our system through comparing our grading result with those graded by experts, which comes out with an overall accuracy of up to 85%.     

Image feature detection from phase congruency based on two-dimensional Hilbert transform

The theory of phase congruency is that features such as step edges, roofs, and deltas always reach the maximum phase of image harmonic components. We propose a modified algorithm of phase congruency to detect image features based on two-dimensional (2-D) discrete Hilbert transform. Windowing technique is introduced to locate image features in the algorithm. Local energy is obtained by convoluting original image with two operators of removing direct current (DC) component over current window and 2-D Hilbert transform, respectively. Then, local energy is divided with the sum of Fourier amplitude of current window to retrieve the value of phase congruency. Meanwhile, we add the DC component of current window on original image to the denominator of phase congruency model to reduce the noise. Finally, the proposed algorithm is compared with some existing algorithm in systematical way. The experimental results of images in Berkeley Segmentation Dataset (BSDS) and remotely sensed images show that this algorithm is readily to detect image features.     

特征组合和多模块学习的视网膜血管分割

有监督的学习方法用于视网膜血管分割须以专家手动标记好的视网膜血管为标准，存在训练样本获取困难且训练时间长等不足。针对这些缺点，提出一种基于特征组合的多模块无监督学习方法，提取眼底图像素的不变矩、Hessian矩阵、相位一致性、Gabor小波变换、Candy边缘共18维特征向量，采用多模块[k]-means方法进行视网膜血管分割。实验结果表明，该方法简单，具有较好的准确度，且时间开销少。     

双层水平集描述眼底图像视杯视盘分割

目的 青光眼是一种可导致视力严重减弱甚至失明的高发眼部疾病。在眼底图像中,视杯和视盘的检测是青光眼临床诊断的重要步骤之一。然而,眼底图像普遍是灰度不均匀的,眼底结构复杂,不同结构之间的灰度重叠较多,受到血管和病变的干扰较为严重。这些都给视盘与视杯的分割带来很大挑战。因此,为了更准确地提取眼底图像中的视杯和视盘区域,提出一种基于双层水平集描述的眼底图像视杯视盘分割方法。方法 通过水平集函数的不同层级分别表示视杯轮廓和视盘轮廓,依据视杯与视盘间的位置关系建立距离约束,应用图像的局部信息驱动活动轮廓演化,克服图像的灰度不均匀性。根据视杯与视盘的几何形状特征,引入视杯与视盘形状的先验信息约束活动轮廓的演化,从而实现视杯与视盘的准确分割。结果 本文使用印度Aravind眼科医院提供的具有视杯和视盘真实轮廓注释的CDRISHTI-GS1数据集对本文方法进行实验验证。该数据集主要用来验证视杯及视盘分割方法的鲁棒性和有效性。本文方法在数据集上对视杯和视盘区域进行分割,取得了67.52%的视杯平均重叠率,81.04%的视盘平均重叠率,0.719的视杯F1分数和0.845的视盘F1分数,结果优于基于COSFIRE（combination of shifted filter responses）滤波模型的视杯视盘分割方法、基于先验形状约束的多相Chan-Vese（C-V）模型和基于聚类融合的水平集方法。结论 实验结果表明,本文方法能够有效克服眼底图像灰度不均匀、血管及病变区域的干扰等影响,更为准确地提取视杯与视盘区域。