Assessment of the Optic Nerve Disc and Excavation Parameters of Interactive and Automated Parameterization Methods

Glaucoma is one of the most insidious eye diseases the occurrence and progression of which a human does not feel. This article provides a brief overview of the eye nerve parameterization methods and algorithms. Parameterization itself is an important task that provides and uniquely defines the structure of the optic nerve disc and further can be used in disease detection or other studies that require a parametric estimate of the eye fundus pattern. So far, planimetric completely automated parameterization of excavation from eye fundus images has not been investigated in detail in the scientific literature. In this article, the authors describe an automated excavation and parameterization algorithm and make the correlation analysis of parameters obtained by both automated and interactive techniques. The obtained results are then compared with those produced by Optical Coherence and Heidelberg Retina Tomography. Finally, the article discusses glaucoma disease detection abilities using the estimated parameters of the eye fundus structures, obtained by different parameterization techniques.