Blood Vessel Wall Tracking Method that sequentially updates the Search Direction considering the Blood Vessel Centerline in Fundus Images

Abstract

Arteriovenous crossing phenomenon is a change in the shape of veins such as stenosis and distortion at the intersection of arteries and veins in the retina, and is one of the important indicators of arteriosclerosis. In estimating the degree of arteriosclerosis based on the shape of veins, the accuracy of contour line extraction of the blood vessel wall is important. In this study, to extract the shape of the vein wall near the intersection, which has a complex shape, without transferring to the artery wall, we investigated a method of blood vessel wall tracking in which the search direction is sequentially updated with the direction of the blood vessel centerline as the reference direction. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by experiments using actual fundus images.