Evaluating the accuracy of optic nerve detections in retina imaging using complementary methods

Abstract

The detection of the optic nerve in retina images is a key element of detecting the anatomical structure of the retina. In this work we report on the fusion of two complementary optic nerve detection methods. The methods are complementary in the sense that they use different fundamental queues for locating the optic nerve. By fusing the methods through applying simple distance-based threshold, a confidence level may be assigned to the quality of the optic nerve detection. In a practical screening system this metric can be used to determine if the images should be immediately reviewed by a physician or if further automatic processing is feasible. We report on the results for two different data sets and show that the use of the threshold improves detection quality. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.