42 Optic Disc Center Detection in Fundus Images Based on Gaussian Vessel Detector and Line Operator

In this paper, we present a method based on Gaussian vessel detector and line operator to detect the center of optic disc center. The Gaussian vessel detector is used to remove all the vessels so that the possible influence of vessel which could occur during the line operation would be prevented. Next, as OD usually has a circular brightness structure with a brightness variation from relatively dark to bright along the direction from the boundary to the center of OD, a line operator is thus designed to search such structure in each pixel in the fundus image, and the direction of each line segments is determined by the maximum response. Proceeded with several denoise methods, coordination of points with the brightest intensity are averaged to be the detection result. The proposed method achieved a success ratio of 96.3 on S.T.A.R.E fundus database and is also tested on several images which suffer from severe bad illumination or noise.