Segmentation of Optic Disc in Fundus Images Using an Active Contour

A successful optic disc (OD) segmentation is an important task for automated detection white lesions related to diabetic retinopathy. Therefore, exudate detection is the authors' major purpose, but they must extract the OD prior to the process because it appears with similar color, intensity and contrast to other characteristics of the retinal image. The retinal image consists of blood vessels that emerge from the OD. The presence of these blood vessels may act as a disturbance for the detection of OD. This article presents a novel method for segmentation of the OD in retinal images. The methodology includes localization of the OD center, followed by elimination of vascular structure using an inpainting method. Finally, an active contour model was applied to boundary OD segmentation. The results are compared with a ground truth image from the ophthalmologist. The source retinal image for performing this work was obtained from the publicly available DRIVE and MESSIDOR databases. This method offers a successful segmentation of OD which may help in diagnosis of various retinal abnormalities.