Title: Detection of blood vessels in human retinal images using Ant Colony Optimisation method

Authors: Ganesan Kavitha, Swaminathan Ramakrishnan

Addresses: Department of Electronics Engineering, MIT Campus, Anna University, Chennai 600044, India. ' Biomedical Engineering Group, Department of Applied Mechanics, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India

Abstract: In this, an attempt has been made to analyse blood vessels in human retinal digital images using Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) based edge detection algorithm and was then correlated with Otsu and Matched filter methods. Results show that the ACO method provides high visual quality output with better detection of blood vessels. It provides better delineation, distinctly differentiates central veins, extracts small blood vessels and detects abnormalities in the image. The ratio of vessel-to-vessel free area using ACO method is distinctly different for normal and abnormal images (p < 0.005). It appears that this study is useful for mass screening and avoids complications at later stages of diseases.

Keywords: retinal images; blood vessels; ACO; ant colony optimisation; Otsu method; matched filter; human retina; visual quality; human eye; digital images; central veins; retinal abnormalities; abnormality detection; image processing; medical imaging.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2011.039926

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2011 Vol.5 No.4, pp.360 - 370

Published online: 21 Jan 2015 *

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