A Semi-automated System for Optic Nerve Head Segmentation in Digital Retinal Images

Abstract

Out of the twelve pairs of cranial nerves, optic nerve is the most important cranial nerve. Optic nerve establishes a connection from eyeball to brain. The four segments present in optic are: intraocular, intra-orbital, intracanalicular, and intracranial. Optical nerve head segmentation may lead to detection of many diseases such as glaucoma, eye hypertension. We propose a semi-automated system, where independent contours are defined, and then with the help of those ground truths, a person with medical education and solid experience in ophthalmology will be able to manually set the contours. Such a process would result in extracting information regarding optic diseases like glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, retinal vascular occlusion.