A Novel Method to Detect Fovea

from Color Fundus Images

Samiksha Pachade, Prasanna Porwal and Manesh Kokare

Abstract The computer-aided diagnosis technology in retinal image analysis

requires localization of different fundus structures. Efficient detection and local-
ization of fovea are essential in the analysis of diabetic macular edema. This paper
demonstrates a novel technique for detection of fovea from color fundus images
based on image enhancement by adaptive manifold filter and further mathematical
morphological operations for final foveal center localization. The major advantage
of the proposed technique is that it does not need a spatial relationship of optic disc
and vessels for the detection of fovea. It is robust to illumination changes and inter-
ference caused by retinal pathologies. Experiments show encouraging results that are
analyzed on five publically available databases DRIVE, HEI-MED, DIARETDB1,
HRF, and MESSIDOR with an accuracy of detection as 100%, 99.40%, 98.88%,
100%, and 98.66%, respectively. Comparative analysis of results indicates that the
proposed method achieves better performance than other earlier methods present in
the literature.

Keywords Macula detection · Fovea detection · Retinal image analysis

Diabetic macular edema

1 Introduction

The retina is a semi-transparent light-sensitive layer present at back of the eye.

Figure 1 illustrates the fundamental structures in color fundus image like macula,
fovea, optic disc (OD), and blood vessels (BV). The fovea is a dark-shaded region

S. Pachade (B) · P. Porwal · M. Kokare

Center of Excellence in Signal and Image Processing, Shri Guru Gobind Singhji
Institute of Engineering and Technology, Nanded, India
e-mail: 2017pec601@sggs.ac.in
P. Porwal
e-mail: porwalprasanna@sggs.ac.in
M. Kokare
e-mail: mbkokare@sggs.ac.in

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 957

B. Iyer et al. (eds.), Computing, Communication and Signal Processing,
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 810,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1513-8_97
958 S. Pachade et al.

Fig. 1 Fundamental
components of fundus image

which is oval in shape having diameter equal to 1.5 mm and it is nearly equal
to the diameter of optic disc. Fovea is the most sensitive region with majority of
photoreceptors present. It is responsible for central, most accurate and color vision.
Any deposit on the foveal region creates blindness to central vision.
Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a problem with greater significance and huge finan-
cial burden on the global economy with its incidence is growing at epidemic levels
[1]. Diabetes leads to complications such as diabetic retinopathy (DR). DR is the
prevalent cause of vision loss in the working-age population. Patients with DR can
get affected by diabetic macular edema (DME) at any time during its progression.
The leakage of blood vessels causes accumulation of fluid in the macula region is
responsible for DME. Severity grading of DME is based on presence of accumulated
fluid corresponding to the distance from fovea center. Hence, automatic detection of
fovea is essential in the development of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for
DR and DME. Computer-aided detection of edema is essential for early diagnosis
of disease.

2 Related Work

Identification of fovea has got less consideration; this is likely because fuzzy appear-
ance and low contrast of fovea with its background make its detection difficult and
challenging. There are few methodologies presented in the literature.
Tobin et al. [2] proposed technique for fovea localization. Optic disc is located and
vascular arch is estimated using parabolic model. Location of fovea is decided using
these two anatomical structures. Sagar et al. [3] detect OD using principle compo-
nent analysis (PCA) and blood vessels are mask out using mathematical morphologic
operation. Fovea is determined using 1% of the darkest pixels. Niemeijer et al. [4]
utilized point distribution model along with cost function to estimate the location of
fovea. Welfer et al. [5] used morphological operation on region of interest (ROI),
A Novel Method to Detect Fovea from Color Fundus Images 959

which is determined using the relationship of OD and fovea. Chin et al. [6] made use
of minimum vessel density region for the localization of fovea center. Vessel density
is calculated using binary vessel mask. Akram et al. [7] determined macula using
the feature set and then classify it as macula or non-macula using Gaussian mixture
model classifier. Feature set is determined by detecting all dark regions from retina.
Aquino et al. [8] detected fovea center using the positional statistics with respect
to OD and vessel tree. Kao et al. [9] locate OD by template matching and then
fovea is searched in vessel free region. Medhi and Dandapat [10] utilized intensity
information of processed red plane of color fundus image for localization of fovea.
Molina-Casado et al. [11] made use of template matching technique along with corre-
lation for the detection of macula blob. Tan et al. [12] used seven-layer convolutional
neural network (CNN) to classify each pixel of retinal image as background, blood
vessels, OD, and fovea.
We proposed a novel and robust technique for automatic fovea detection, which
can be used in automatic DR screening projects. The algorithm initially searches for
the fovea region with prior information that it is the dark intensity region. Lastly, it
segments the fovea using the morphological operations. The major advantage of the
presented methodology is that it does not require prior identification of optic disc,
blood vessels, and/or any other fundus pathologies, thus reducing the complexity
in identification. The accuracy of the technique is tested on five publicly accessible
retinal datasets.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows; Sect. 3 describes proposed method,
the result is discussed in Sects. 4 and 5 give the conclusion.

3 Proposed Method

3.1 Field of View Generation

The green plane g = (g(i))i∈ is defined over  ∈ R2 . Figure 2a, b shows the color
fundus and its g plane. Green plane shows better contrast between foveal region and
background as compared to red and blue plane. Thus, for the further analysis, green

Fig. 2 a Color fundus image, b green channel, c field of view (FOV)

960 S. Pachade et al.

Fig. 3 ROI from retina

plane is considered. The field of view (FOV) as shown in Fig. 2c is determined by

using mean estimate of g as follows:

1, g(i) ≥ g(mean)/2
FOV = (1)
0, otherwise

3.2 ROI Selection

FOV
Utilizing the FOV mask, FOV center C f = F O V2width , 2
height
and FOV diameter
D f = mean([F O Vwidth F O Vheight ], 2) are derived. The ROI center is same as the
C f and ROI is selected by considering D f /6 part of image from C f as shown in
Fig. 3. To reduce computational complexity, ROI is further downsampled by factor
of 2. The output image is given by I R O I .

3.3 Image Enhancement

Uneven illumination in the retinal atlas caused while capturing the fundus image
poses certain challenges in the identification of retinal structures including fovea.
Hence, ROI enhancement is done in order to create ease in fovea detection. It is done
by utilizing adaptive manifold filter [13] for the purpose which has the capability to
accelerate filtering and deliver high-quality enhanced image. In this filter, weighted
average of the input gray scale pixels is done and a new set of pixel gray scale is
produced. The weights of the filter are given by kernel φ. Filtering the image with φ
gives a new image Ienhc :

n j ∈s φ(nˆi − nˆj )I R O Ii
Ienhci =  (2)
n j ∈s φ(nˆi − nˆj )
A Novel Method to Detect Fovea from Color Fundus Images 961

Functional selection of φ is an axis-aligned Gaussian, as given below:

 −1

1
φ (nˆi − nˆj ) = ex p(− (nˆi − nˆj ) T
(nˆi − nˆj ) (3)
2

where is a diagonal covariance matrix of size d × d. The nˆi and nˆj are neighbor-
hoods around the corresponding pixel.

3.4 Fovea Detection

Subtract the image Ienhc from I R O I and multiply with detailed amplification factor
A as
Iampl = I R O I + (I R O I − Ienhc ) × A (4)

where the value of A is equal to 10. Image is filtered using multidimensional Gaussian
filter where input array values outside the bounds of the array are assigned to the
nearest array border. Mapping of intensity values of the image obtained by applying
a multidimensional filter to the newly obtained values in such a way that 1% of data
is saturated to low and high intensities. The output image is as shown in Fig. 4c. The
output image so obtained is denoted by Iampl .

(a) (b) (c)

(d) (e) (f)

(g) (h) (i)

Fig. 4 a Original image, Image after: b ROI selection, c enhancement, d thresholding, e mor-
phological opening, f selecting largest connected component, g mapping to original size, h fovea
detection, i fovea localization
962 S. Pachade et al.

Hard thresholding is done with thresholding intensity equal to zero as shown in

Fig. 4d. As intensity of the vessels and dark lesions (i.e., hemorrhages) are also zero,
they are also segmented out and output Ithr e is obtained. Application of morphological
opening with a disk-shaped structuring element E with fixed radius of size s = 4 is
as given in Eq. 5. After opening operation, 95% of small vessels are removed.
Es
Iopen (Ithr e ) = δ Es [ε Es (Ithr e )] (5)

where δ and ε are morphological dilation and erosion operation respectively.

Algorithm 1 Fovea Segmentation and Localization

1: Input: Original RGB image I and Parameters A = 10, s = 4, E = Disc structuring element.
2: Result: Segmented Fovea (Fovea) and its Localization (L f ovea )
3: g(i) ← I (:, :, 2)
4: if g(i) ≥ g(mean)/2 then
5: FOV = 1
6: else
7: FOV = 0
8: end if
F O Vheight
9: C f ← F O V2width , 2
10: D f ← mean([F O Vwidth F O Vheight ], 2)
11: I R O I ← Find R O I (I, C f , D f /6)
 
12: φ (nˆi − nˆj ) ← ex 
p(− 21 (nˆi − nˆj )T −1 (nˆi − nˆj )
n j ∈s φ(nˆi −nˆj )I R O Ii
13: Ienhc ← Ienhci = 
φ(nˆi −nˆj )
n j ∈s
14: Iampl ← I R O I + (I R O I − Ienhc ) × A
15: [ p, q] ← si ze(Iampl )
16: if Iampl (i, j) == 0 then
17: Ithre (i, j) = 255
18: else
19: Ithre (i, j) = Iampl (i, j)
20: end if
Es (I
thre ) ← δ [ε (Ithre )]
21: Iopen Es Es

22: Fovea Mask ← ConnectedComponent (Iopen , [ ], 1)

23: Fovea ← r esi ze(Fovea Mask)
Foveaheight
24: L f ovea ← Fovea2 width , 2

The fovea is the largest connected region and the unwanted detected regions
are much smaller than that. All the connected components of Iopen are detected,
and labels are given. To segment out only the fovea, calculate the area of all the
labeled connected components and arrange them in descending order, i.e., connected
component with the largest area is first one. Only first component is selected as
shown in Fig. 4f. Detected fovea is shown in Fig. 4g. Finally, center is detected using
regional property. The total algorithm of proposed method is given in Algorithm 1.
A Novel Method to Detect Fovea from Color Fundus Images 963

Table 1 Comparison of methods present in literature with the proposed method

Method Need of Need of Database used Total Number Success rate
OD in BV in number of images for fovea
advance advance of images used for location (%)
in dataset analysis
Welfer et al. [5] Yes No DRIVE 40 37 100
DIARETDB1 89 89 96.62
Chin et al. [6] Yes Yes MESSIDOR 1200 303 72.9
Aquino et al. [8] Yes Yes MESSIDOR 1200 1136 98.24
DIARETDB1 89 89 94.38
Akram et al. [7] Yes Yes MESSIDOR 1200 1200 97.2
HEI-MED 169 169 98.22
Kao et al. [9] Yes Yes MESSIDOR 1200 1200 97.8
DIARETDB0 130 130 92.1
DIARETDB1 89 89 93.1
Medhi et al. [10] Yes Yes DRIVE 40 39 100
DIARETDB1 89 87 97.70
MESSIDOR 1200 1190 97.98
HRF 45 45 100
Molina-Casado No No MESSIDOR 1200 1200 98.58
et al. [11]
DIARETDB1 89 89 100
ONHSD 99 87 98.85
Proposed No No DRIVE 40 40 100
Method
HEI-MED 169 169 99.40
DIARETDB1 89 89 98.88
HRF 45 45 100
MESSIDOR 1200 1200 98.66

4 Result

Results of the presented algorithm are analyzed on 1543 images of five publicly
accessible databases.
From DRIVE [14] 40/40 images detects fovea accurately, 168/169 from HEI-
MED [15], 88/89 from DIARETDB1 [16], 45/45 from HRF [17] and 1184/1200
from MESSIDOR [18] database. The presented algorithm for fovea detection resulted
in a success rate of 99.38%. The performance of presented method is compared with
various methods present in literature and is tabulated in Table 1. Our experimental
results are promising and show improvement over previous methods present.
964 S. Pachade et al.

5 Conclusion

In this paper, we have proposed a novel technique for the detection of fovea which is
essential for analysis of diabetic macular edema. Furthermore, it can be utilized with
vessel detection method to boost the performance of red lesion, retinitis pigmentosa,
and/or scar detection. The proposed technique is efficient since there is no need of
detecting optic disc and blood vessels. The proposed method can be used in the
development of an automatic diagnosis system. In future, it can be incorporated with
the detection of fovea and pathologies in the fovea region from optical coherence
tomography images for better analysis of DME.

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