Optic disc segmentation using a matching filter and a deformable model

This paper presents an algorithm for automatic extraction of the optic disc in retinal digital images. The developed system consists of two main parts. Firstly, a clustering algorithm is used to select the regions which contain the pixels with the highest gray levels. A correlation filter is applied to these regions to compute the approximate center of the optic disc. Then, in order to extract the optic disc, a deformable model which works in three stages is used. The localization of the region of interest is successful in 98.5% of the cases and the optic disc is correctly extracted in 93% of the cases.