Automatic segmentation of blood vessels in retinal images using 2D Gabor wavelet and sub-image thresholding resulting from image partition

Purpose The retina features the only blood vessel network in humans that is visible in a non-invasive imaging method. This, along with uniqueness and stability throughout life in healthy subjects, makes it an ideal target for personal identification methods in biometric systems and also for the screening and diagnosis of diseases. However, retinal images usually present low contrast of the vessels in relation to the retinal background and high level of noise stemming mainly from the acquisition process. This work aims to reduce noise and improve contrast to increase the accuracy of retinal vessel segmentation.