2014 IEEE 22nd Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU 2014)

Gabor Szgeleri kullanlarak Retina Kan

Damarlarnda Hzl Alglama ve Bltleme
Fast Detection and Segmentation in Retinal Blood
Vessels using Gabor Filters
Farnaz Farokhian, Hasan Demirel
Elektrik Elektronik Mhendislii Blm,
Dou Akdeniz niversitesi,
Gazimausa, Kuzey Kbrs Trk Cumhuriyeti,
farnaz.farokhian@cc.emu.edu.tr, hasan.demirel@emu.edu.tr
zeteeker hastalnn erken safhalarnda retina damar ekil
bilgisi ile geliimi arasndaki ilikiden yararlanarak hastaln
belirtilerinin tespiti oftalmologlar iin nemli bir konu olmutur.
Bununla birlikte, damarlarn hassas bir ekilde bltlenip, hzl
alglanmas eker hastalnn tehisininde nemli bir rol
almaktadr. Bu almada, yksek frekans bilgilerinin
yakalanmas iin 180 filtreden oluan Gabor filtre bankas
kullanlmaktadr. Ayrca, gvenilir bir performans iin eik
deer belirleme sreci sistemli bir ekilde tarif edilmektedir.
nerilen yaklam DRIVE retina veritabanndan grntlere
uygulanmaktadr. Verimli bltleme sonular harcanan
zamann nemli olduunu gstermektedir. Bltleme doruluu
ile bltleme iin gerekli olan zaman deerlendirildiinde
literatrdeki birok yntemden daha iyi bir performans elde
edilmektedir.
Anahtar KelimelerGabor
alglanmas, retina imgeleri.

szgeleri,

kan

damarlarnn

Abstract The relationship between change in retinal vessels

morphology and progress to detect the signs of diabetic
retinopathy in the early stages has been the major subject of
ophthalmologists. However, the accurate segmentation and fast
detection of vessels to diagnosis disease have been given
important role in quality of application. In this paper, in order to
capture high frequency information a bank of 180 Gabor filters
is used. Additionally, a systematic way of determining the
threshold value for reliable performance is described. The
proposed approach is applied to images from DRIVE retina
database. The results of efficient segmentation indicate that time
of detection is considerable. The accuracy of the segmentation is
better and the time required to perform the segmentation is
faster than many other methods in the literature.
KeywordsGabor filters, detection of blood vessels, retinal
images

I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, the state-of-the-art image processing methods for
accurate segmentation and detection of vessels in human
fundus images have received a considerable attention, which

could aid in the detection of disease. Fast detection and

segmentation in retina blood vessels make it suitable for early
diagnosis of diseases like diabetic and hyphenation, which is
an eye disease and a common complication of diabetes that
can cause vision loss and blindness. The diabetes Distribution
for all different age groups was estimated 2.8% in 2000 and
4.4% in 2030. It means that the total number of these patients
will rise from 171 million to 366 million between 2000 -2030
years [1]. So, the need for fast detection and segmentation
methods of diabetic retinopathy will increase as well.
Many methods for segmentation of retinal vessels have been
proposed. Previously reported methods to detect blood vessels
in retina, can be categorized into two groups: those group that
require training image called as rule-based methods and those
group that do not require training image which is called
supervised methods.
In the first group, we introduce some methods using
matched filtering and vessel tracking. Matched filtering: this
technique [2] uses a hybrid model of ant-based clustering.
Although ant-based algorithms or MF algorithms are
sufficient to extract blood vessels, using the hybrid form can
improve the accuracy and false/true ratios performance of the
resultant images. Final detection result is a combination of
different threshold applied which is provided by the individual
threshold.
Vessel tracking: this method [3] follows vessel center lines to
obtain vascular structure. Starting from an initial set of points
established automatically or by manual labeling, vessels are
traced by deciding the most appropriate candidate pixel from
those close to that currently under evaluation.
Supervised methods are based on pixel classification. This
consists on classifying each pixel into vessel and non-vessel,
introduced using ridge-based vessel detection methods and
Gabor filters.
Ridge-based vessel detection: Staal et al. [4] assumed that
vessels are elongated structures and it was the basis for the
supervised method of ridge-based vessel segmentation. Ridges
extracted from the image were used as primitives to form line

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2014 IEEE 22nd Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU 2014)

elements. Each pixel was then assigned to its closet line

element, the image thus being partitioned into patches. For
every pixel, 27 features were firstly computed and those
obtaining the best class separability were finally selected.
Feature vectors were classified by using a k-nearest-neighbor
classifier and sequential forward feature selection.
2-D Gabor wavelets: Soares et al. [5] used a Gaussian
mixture model Bayesian classifier. In this algorithm by using
Gabor wavelet transform multiscale analysis was performed
on the image for feature detection. Then colour images were
converted to gray-level image by extracting the green channel
information and the maximum Gabor transform response were
considered over angles at four different scales.
Gabor filters in segmentation are such that simple cell in the
visual cortex can be modelled by Gabor functions. Gabor

scheme is a suitable representation for visual information in

the frequency and space [6], which can be considered as
orientation based edge detectors. Knowledge about the
location of the blood vessels can assist retinal image analysis
in ophthalmology to screen the effects of diabetes and
hypertension on the visual system.
In this paper, we describe an algorithm to detect blood
vessels in retinal images. This includes three major steps. The
first step is to capture edges by using a bank of 180 Gabor
filters with of separation in their orientation. In The second
step we propose a systematic way of thresholding to
improving performance and the last part Error analysis is
examined.

Mask

RGB

False Positive

Erosion

Total Filter
Response

Intensity

Manual
Segmentation

Segmented
Output

Error Pixe ls

.
.

M ax
Response

TH

Stage 3

Stage 2

Stage 1

True Negative

Fig. 1. System diagram of the proposed method for blood vessel segmentation using Gabor filters.

To evaluate segmentation of vessels DRIVE (Digital Retinal

Image for Vessel Extraction) database is used [7].
The paper is organized in three sections, where section I

propose method for image segmentation is given in details.

Section II describes the results and includes the discussions
about the obtained results and section III presents the
conclusions of the paper.
II. PROPOSED IMAGE SEGMENTATION METHOD
In this section, a retinal vessel extraction system that uses
Gabor filter based segmentation of the vessels in retinal
images is proposed. The system diagram of the proposed
approach is shown in Fig 1. The proposed system also
incorporates a systematic way of determining threshold value.
The main goal is to capture efficient edge information of the
vessels. The system is divided into three stages is defended as
follow:

channels in RGB image, we have selected the green channel

image for further processing [8].
Let x, y be the input retinal image while
intensity image calculated as:
,

is the

(1)

Where R , , G , and B , corresponds to the red,

green and blue components of the input RGB image.
We have applied the Gabor filtering techniques to detect
blood vessels in retinal images based on Gabor wavelets. The
real Gabor filter kernel oriented at the angle = can be
formulated as [9]:
Based on this formula and are the standard deviation
values in the x and y directions, and is the frequency of the
modulating sinusoid. The parameter can is the thickness of
line detector.

A. Gabor Filtering
Since In the color retinal images, the blood vessels appear
most contrasted in the green channel compared to red and blue

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cos x

(2)

2014 IEEE 22nd Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU 2014)

The amplitude of the Gaussian term in equation (2) is reduced

to one half of its maximum at x = and y = ; hence,

= / ln . The cosine term has a period of ;

therefore = , = / . l is the elongation of the Gabor
filter in the orientation direction, with respect to its thickness;
hence = .
The Gabor filter
, is applied to image
, for 180
different angles between and
and a set of filter
responses are collected by:
(3)
,
=
,
,
Where corresponds to the convolution operation. To obtain
good response of different directions, the Gabor filter is
rotated from -90 to +90 in steps of one degree. In order to
efficiently detect the vessel edge locations, at each pixel
position , only the maximum response is retained. The
total response is given as:
(4)
, = max[
, ] , = [ :
: ]

The accuracy (ACC) an image is the fraction of pixels

correctly classified. Figure 2 indicates the accuracy curve
against every possible threshold value.
In order to ensure that only the portion of the image
including data is considered during analysis, a mask generated
for images from the DRIVE dataset is used. The binary mask
M x, y will isolate retina region to segment x, y via
multiplying (pixel by pixel) x, y .
x, y = x, y [M x, y B]

(8)

The artifacts present at the edges of the segmented image

are removed by applying morphological erosion with a
disc-shaped structuring element of radius equals to 10 pixels
[10]. The illustrative overview of the two main steps used is
indicated in Fig. 3.

Then logarithmic normalization to suppress the peak values

for easier post-processing is applied.
(5)
R x, y = ln R x, y
B.

Thresholding
The threshold is results of segmentation to classify each
pixel into two classes: vessels and non-vessels. Thresholding
allows the separation of an image into separate components by
turning it into a binary image. This involves the image being
separated into white or black pixels on the basis of whether
their intensity value is greater or less than a certain threshold
level. Choosing the threshold value dictates the quality of the
segmentation.
In order to generate the binary output image x, y , the
is the threshold
values of
,
is thresholded where
value used.
if
,

(6)
x, y =
if
,
<
In this context, a systematic way for determining the threshold
value is crucial. We have utilized a threshold according to the
threshold value that maximizes the accuracy. In Fig.2
accuracy is plotted against every possible threshold value and
the threshold maximizing this curve is declared to the selected
threshold.

Figure 2. Determining threshold value based on maximizing the

accuracy.

TP + TN
TP + TN + FP + FN

(7)

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Figure 3. (a) Image 07 (b) intensity image. (c) Total magnitude

response of 180 Gabor filters over 8 before thresholding. (d)
Result of thresholding the total magnitude response.

C. Error Analysis
In the final stage error analyze by comparing segmented
image with manual segmentation (ground truth) is examined.
The obtained result is difference between segmented image
and ground truth, which called error image analysis. In order
to analyze Error image, has been divided into two images,
which concluding red and blue pixels are corresponding to
False Positive (FP) error pixels and False Negative (FN) error
pixels. The performance of this approach is evaluated on
DRIVE databases with manual segmentation (ground truth).
is the threshold value used and the
To error analysis
generated output vessel image x, y is compared with the
manually segmented vessel image x, y .

, = x, y x, y
=
,
, >
=
,
, <

(9)
(10)
(11)

Where corresponds the False Alarm Error (FAR) pixels

and corresponds the False Rejection Error (FRR) pixels.

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2014 IEEE 22nd Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU 2014)

The overview of the main steps Error analysis when

processing a retinal image, is illustrated Fig.3.

(c)

(a)

Figure 3. (a) Result of thresholding the total magnitude response.

(b) Manual segmentation of blood vessels. (c-d) Difference between
segmented image and manual segmentation divided into the red
pixels: false positives and the blue pixels: false negatives.

(b)

III. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS

A fixed threshold was determined according to the average of
threshold values that maximizes the accuracy of the training
set. Given the fixed threshold, the performance of the
proposed method on segmentation of blood vessels using
Gabor filters are studied by means of different metrics. The
method is evaluated in terms of sensitivity (SE), specificity
(SP) and accuracy (ACC) performance along with those
reported for previous segmentation algorithms. The results are
given in Table I. The results are generally superior or
comparable with the reported results from alternative methods
in the literature.
TABLE K: Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of blood vessels
detection for average of 20 image in test set.
SE
SP
ACC
Vessel Detection Method
Niemjer[11]
67.93
98.01
94.16
Zanna[12]
66.96
97.69
93.77
68.65
97.65
93.66
Proposed method
Martin-preze[13]
72.46
---93.44
Espona[14]
66.34
96.82
93.16
Jiang [15]
64.78
96.25
92.22

IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper a bank of 180 Gabor filters are used for the
efficient detection of the blood vessels in a given retinal
image. A systematic thresholding has been proposed for
effective segmentation process based on accuracy
maximization method. Based on brief comparison with some
other vessels segmentation algorithms in the literature, we can
conclude that our proposed method reaches better or
comparable performance when compared with alternative
methods in the literature.
V. REFERENCES
[1] S. Wild, G. Roglic, A. Green, R. Sicree, and H. King, Global
prevalence of diabetes: Estimates for the year 2000 and projections for
2030, Diabetes Care, vol. 27, pp. 10471053, 2004.
[2] M. G. Cinsdikici and D. Aydin, Detection of blood vessels in
ophthalmoscope images using MF/ant (matched filter/ant colony)
algorithm, Comput. Methods Programs Biomed., vol. 96, pp. 8595,
2009.
[3] L. Gagnon, M. Lalonde, M. Beaulieu, and M.-C. Boucher, Procedure to
detect anatomical structures in optical fundus images, Proc. SPIE
Med. Imag.: Image Process., vol. 4322, pp. 12181225, 2001.

The average time required to perform segmentation on

DRIVE database images is also calculated and compared with
the alternative methods. Table II lists the accuracy and the
respective time in seconds required to complete the
segmentation operation on a Windows 7 on an Intel Intel core
2 duo using Matlab 2010. The results indicate that the
proposed segmentation is considerably faster than other
methods in literature except two methods given in the first two
rows.
Table II: Average time required to perform segmentation on
DRIVE database images.
Method
Training ACC (%)
Time
Al-Rawi [16]
Yes
94.2
2.156 s
Anzalone [17]
Yes
94.19
6s
Proposed method
Yes
93.66
19 s
with 180 directions
Espona [14]
NO
93.52
38.4 s
Mendonca [18]
NO
94.63
150 s
Soares [5]
Yes
94.66
180 s
Stall [4]
Yes
94.41
900 s

(d)

[4] J. Staal, M. D. Abrmoff, M. Niemeijer, M. A. Viergever, and B. v.

Ginneken, Ridge based vessel segmentation in color images of the
retina, IEEE Trans. Med. Imag., vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 501509, Apr. 2004.
[5] J. V. B. Soares, J. J. G. Leandro, R. M. Cesar, Jr., H. F. Jelinek, and M.J.
Cree, Retinal vessel segmentation using the 2D Gabor wavelet and
supervised classification, IEEE Trans. Med. Imag., vol. 25, no. 9,
pp.12141222, Sep. 2006.
[6] F. Oloumi and R. Rangayyan, "Detection of the temporal arcade in
fundus images of the retina using the Hough transform, " Engineering in
Medicine and Biology Society,Annual International Conference of the
IEEE, September 2009.
[7] "DRIVE: Digital Retinal Images for Vessel Extraction," [Online].
Available: http:// www. isi.uu.nl/ Research/Databases/ DRIVE/.
[8] P. C. Siddalingaswamy, K. Gopalakrishna Prabhu, "Automatic detection
of multiple oriented blood vessels in retinal images," J. Biomedical
Science and Engineering, vol. 3, pp. 101-107, 2010.
[9] X. Zhu, RM. Rangayyan, and A.L. Ells, "Digital Image Processing for
Ophthalmology," pp.22,2011.
[10] F. Farokhian and H. Demirel, Blood Vessels Detection and
Segmentation in Retina using Gabor Filters,
IEEE International
Conference HONET-CNS, Magusa, Cyprus, 2013.
[11] M. Niemeijer, J. Staal, B. v. Ginneken, M. Loog, and M. D. Abramoff, J.
Fitzpatrick and M. Sonka, Eds., Comparative study of retinal vessel
segmentation methods on a new publicly available database, in SPIE
Med. Imag., 2004, vol. 5370, pp. 648656.
[12] F. Zana and J. Klein, Segmentation of vessel-like patterns using

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2014 IEEE 22nd Signal Processing and Communications Applications Conference (SIU 2014)

mathematical morphology and curvature evaluation, IEEE Transactions

on Image Processing 10(7), pp. 1010-1019, 2001.
[13] M. E. Martinez-Perez, A. D. Hughes, S. A. Thom, A. A. Bharath, and K.
H. Parker, Segmentation of blood vessels from red-free and fluorescein
retinal images, Med. Imag. Anal., vol. 11, pp. 4761, 2007.
[14] L. Espona, M. Carreira, M. Penedo, and M. Ortega, "Retinal vessel tree
segmentation using a deformable contour model," 19th International
Conference on Pattern Recognition, pp. 1-4, 2008.
[15] X. Jiang and D. Mojon, Adaptive local thresholding by verification
based multithreshold probing with application to vessel detection in
retinal images, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., vol. 25, no. 1,
pp. 131137, Jan. 2003.
[16] Al-Rawi M, Karajeh H (2007) Genetic algorithm matched filter
optimization for automated detection of blood vessels from digital
retinal images. Comput Meth Prog Bio 87: 248253
[17] A. Anzalone, F. Bizzarri, M. Parodi, M. Storace, "A modular supervised
algorithm for vessel segmentation in red-free retinal images," Compu
Bio Med,pp. 913-922, 2008.
[18] A. M. Mendona and A. Campilho, Segmentation of retinal blood
vessels by combining the detection of centerlines and morphological
reconstruction, IEEE Trans. Med. Imag., vol. 25, no. 9, pp. 12001213,
Sep. 2006.

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