Efficient and Robust Method to Detect the Location of Macular Center Based on Optimal Temporal Determination

The location of the macular central is very important for the examination of macular edema when using an automated screening system. The erratic character of the macular light intensity and the absence of a clear border make this anatomical structure difficult to detect. This paper presents a new method for detecting the macular center based on its geometrical location in the temporal direction of the optic disc. Also, a new method of determining the temporal direction using the vascular features visible on the optic disc is proposed. After detecting the optic disc, the temporal direction is determined by considering blood vessel positions. The macular center is detected using thresholding and simple morphology operations with optimum macular region of interest (ROI) direction. The results show that the proposed method has a low computation time of 0.34 s/image with 100% accuracy for the DRIVE dataset, while that of DiaretDB1 was 0.57 s/image with 98.87% accuracy.