Blood Vessel Segmentation for Retinal Images Based on Am-fm Method

This system proposes a new supervised approach for the blood vessel segmentation method in retina image. This proposed system overcomes the problem of segmenting thin vessels. This method uses a Fuzzy Neural Network (FNN) scheme for pixel classification and computes a 7-D vector composed of gray-level, moment invariants-based features for pixel representation and AM-FM method for composition of the images. The method was evaluated on the publicly available DRIVE and STARE databases, widely used for this purpose, since they contain retinal images where the vascular structure has been precisely marked by experts. Method performance on both sets of test images is better than other existing solutions in literature. The method proves especially accurate for vessel detection in STARE images. Its effectiveness and robustness with different image conditions together with its simplicity and fast implementation make this blood vessel segmentation proposal suitable for retinal image computer analyses such as automated screening for early diabetic retinopathy detection.