Evaluation of retinal vessel segmentation methods for microaneurysms detection

Microaneurysms (MAs) are the earliest sign of diabetic retinopathy and manifest as small reddish spots on the retina. Generally, algorithm design for MAs detection starts by separating the vascular system from the background for a posterior analysis of candidate MAs presence. Following this approach, this paper assesses three different methods for vessel segmentation and how they affect posterior MAs detection. The robustness in developing automatic screening systems for MAs detection is discussed and a methodology to detect candidate MAs in retinal images is introduced. The algorithm combines different vessel segmentation methods with region growing to evaluate which is the best to provide candidate MAs detection.