Title: A bio-inspired method for segmenting the optic disc and macula in retinal images

Authors: Ahmad Taher Azar

Addresses: College of Computer and Information Sciences, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence, Benha University, Benha, Egypt

Abstract: In this paper, Ant Colony System (ACS) based segmentation method is proposed and its features are used for segmenting the optic disc and macula in the retinal images. The suggested ACS-based segmentation approach employs intensity (gray-level) and colour as distinct characteristics to localise and segment the optic disc and macula in the retinal images. The evaluation and assessment of the performance of this nature-inspired approach for automatically separating blood vessels in retinal images by computer on standard retinal image databases revealed that it obtained the best separation of pixels that only belong to a blood vessel above all previous findings. The degree of accuracy of the proposed methodology approaches the best levels of accuracy achieved by techniques using supervised pixel classification algorithms.

Keywords: ant colony system; bio-inspired algorithms; classification; retinal images; computer-aided diagnosis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2023.133882

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2023 Vol.72 No.4, pp.262 - 277

Received: 28 Oct 2022
Accepted: 20 Dec 2022
Published online: 04 Oct 2023 *

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