Automated Detection of Optic Nerve Boundary Based on L~*a~*b~* Color Space
基于L~*a~*b~*色彩空间的视神经边缘自动提取

The parameters of optic nerve, such as shape, area, depth and so on, are the important indices to estimate the retinal health. Extraction of the optic nerve boundary is the precondition for quantifying these parameters. To accurately identify the boundary, a new method to detect the exact optic nerve boundary is proposed based on the L*a*b* color space in this paper. Using morphology and region-aided geometric snake in the L*a*b* color space, the method applies the automatic optic nerve localization base on cross-network to realize the automatic extraction of optic nerve boundary. The feasibility of the new method has been successfully tested for the DRIVE fundus image databases and our clinic images.