Glaucoma screening by the detection of blood vessels and optic cup to disc ratio

Glaucoma is a type of chronic disease that damages the optic nerve and results in loss of vision. As glaucoma cannot be cured, early detection and precaution treatment protect optic nerve against severe vision loss. Glaucoma has been called the “silent theft of sight”. It is not a sudden effect, the loss of vision occurs slowly over a long period. We observe the symptoms only when the disease is advanced stage. Current research towards the assessment of optic nerve head from 2-Dimensional retinal fundus images is challenging task. It leads high-cost for ordinary glaucoma screening. In the proposed method, Self assessed disc Segmentation method is used for the segmentation of the Optic disc. The blood vessels inside the optic disc are segmented by using prewitt edge detection to detect the optic cup. Cup to Disc ratio is calculated from the detected area and size of optic disc and optic cup. From the calculated CDR, the stages of Glaucoma can be found by setting the threshold value. The CDR of normal eye is 0.3. CDR above this value is considered as glaucomatous.