Artery/vein classification of blood vessel tree in retinal imaging

Abstract

[Absctract]: Alterations in the retinal microcirculation are signs of relevant diseases such as hypertension, arteriosclerosis, or diabetes. Specifically, arterial constriction and narrowing were associated with early stages of hypertension. Moreover, retinal vasculature abnormalities may be useful indicators for cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases. The Arterio-Venous Ratio (AVR), that measures the relation between arteries and veins, is one of the most referenced ways of quantifying the changes in the retinal vessel tree. Since these alterations affect differently arteries and veins, a precise characterization of both types of vessels is a key issue in the development of automatic diagnosis systems. In this work, we propose a methodology for the automatic vessel classification between arteries and veins in eye fundus images. The proposal was tested and validated with 19 near-infrared reflectance retinographies. The methodology provided satisfactory results, in a complex domain as is the retinal vessel tree identification and classification.