Detection of retinal nerve fiber layer defects in retinal fundus images using Gabor filtering

Yoshinori Hayashi; Toshiaki Nakagawa; Yuji Hatanaka; Akira Aoyama M.D.; Masakatsu Kakogawa; Takeshi Hara; Hiroshi Fujita; Tetsuya Yamamoto M.D.

doi:10.1117/12.710181

30 March 2007 Detection of retinal nerve fiber layer defects in retinal fundus images using Gabor filtering

Yoshinori Hayashi, Toshiaki Nakagawa, Yuji Hatanaka, Akira Aoyama M.D., Masakatsu Kakogawa, Takeshi Hara, Hiroshi Fujita, Tetsuya Yamamoto M.D.

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6514, Medical Imaging 2007: Computer-Aided Diagnosis; 65142Z (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.710181
Event: Medical Imaging, 2007, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

Retinal nerve fiber layer defect (NFLD) is one of the most important findings for the diagnosis of glaucoma reported by ophthalmologists. However, such changes could be overlooked, especially in mass screenings, because ophthalmologists have limited time to search for a number of different changes for the diagnosis of various diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and glaucoma. Therefore, the use of a computer-aided detection (CAD) system can improve the results of diagnosis. In this work, a technique for the detection of NFLDs in retinal fundus images is proposed. In the preprocessing step, blood vessels are "erased" from the original retinal fundus image by using morphological filtering. The preprocessed image is then transformed into a rectangular array. NFLD regions are observed as vertical dark bands in the transformed image. Gabor filtering is then applied to enhance the vertical dark bands. False positives (FPs) are reduced by a rule-based method which uses the information of the location and the width of each candidate region. The detected regions are back-transformed into the original configuration. In this preliminary study, 71% of NFLD regions are detected with average number of FPs of 3.2 per image. In conclusion, we have developed a technique for the detection of NFLDs in retinal fundus images. Promising results have been obtained in this initial study.

Citation Download Citation

Yoshinori Hayashi, Toshiaki Nakagawa, Yuji Hatanaka, Akira Aoyama M.D., Masakatsu Kakogawa, Takeshi Hara, Hiroshi Fujita, and Tetsuya Yamamoto M.D. "Detection of retinal nerve fiber layer defects in retinal fundus images using Gabor filtering", Proc. SPIE 6514, Medical Imaging 2007: Computer-Aided Diagnosis, 65142Z (30 March 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.710181

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