Width measurement of retinal vessels using cubic spline fitting and extended edge‐searching mode

Abstract

Abnormal changes in the retinal vessel width usually indicate the presence of certain diseases. This paper presents a novel model to measure the width of retinal vessels. This method firstly employs cubic spline fitting to determine the vessel cross‐sectional direction at the center point of a vessel profile, then uses the extended edge‐searching mode to detect vessel edge points along the vessel cross‐sectional direction, and finally obtains the width value by calculating the distance between the edge point and the center point. The method can accurately locate vessel edge points and successfully solve the problem of central light reflex in blood vessels. Experimental analyses on a publicly available database show that the proposed approach has excellent performance in accuracy with other existing measurement techniques. It provides an effective idea for analyzing morphological changes in blood vessels and can be extended to obtain the shape features of other objects.