Automatic imaging method for optic disc segmentation using morphological techniques and active contour fitting

Optic disc segmentation is a crucial step in diagnosis of various ocular diseases like Glaucoma and Diabetic Retinopathy. This work proposes a technique for automatic detection of optic disc from the fundus images using edge based and active contour fitting method. The proposed work has used image processing techniques such as smoothing filters for removal of blood vessels, morphological operations to correctly segment the optic disc and reject the false positives, active contour snake based model for smoothing of optic disc boundary. The results of optic disc segmentation obtained from the proposed work are compared with the ground truth marked by the ophthalmologists. The results are convincing and segmentation results show that the method has good accuracy. An average overlapping score of more than 90% is obtained for the fundus images under test.