Ultrafast localization of the optic disc using dimensionality reduction of the search space

Optic Disc (OD) localization is an important pre-processing step that significantly simplifies subsequent segmentation of the OD and other retinal structures. Current OD localization techniques suffer from impractically-high computation times (few minutes/image). In this work, we present an ultrafast technique that requires less than a second to localize the OD. The technique is based on reducing the dimensionality of the search space by projecting the 2D image feature space onto two orthogonal (x- and y-) axes. This results in two 1D signals that can be used to determine the x- and y- coordinates of the OD. Image features such as retinal vessels orientation and the OD brightness and shape are used in the current method. Four publicly-available databases, including STARE and DRIVE, were used to evaluate the proposed technique. The OD was successfully located in 330 images out of 340 images (97%) with an average computation time of 0.65 seconds.