Vessel segmentation in retinal images

Detection of the papilla region and vessel detection on images of the retina are problems that can be solved with pattern recognition techniques. Topographic images, as provided e.g. by the HRT device, as well as fundus images can be used as source for the detection. It is of diagnostic importance to separate vessels inside the papilla area from those outside this area. Therefore, detection of the papilla is important also for vessel segmentation. In this contribution we present state of the art methods for automatic disk segmentation and compare their results. Vessels detected with matched filters (wavelets, derivatives of the Gaussian, etc.) are shown as well as vessel segmen- tation using image morphology. We present our own method for vessel segmentation based on a special matched filter followed by image morphology. In this contribution we argue for a new matched filter that is suited for large vessels in HRT images.