Automated Cone Photoreceptor Cell Segmentation and Identification in Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope Images Using Morphological Processing and Watershed Algorithm

Geometrical analysis of cone photoreceptor cells is important not only for ophthalmic diagnosis, but also for research on eye diseases. In this study, an automated cone photoreceptor cell segmentation and identification method based on morphological processing and watershed algorithm is presented for adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope images. Our method includes steps for image denoising, rough segmentation, fine segmentation, small region removal, and identification. The effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed by comparing its results with those obtained manually yielding precision, recall, and F1-score values of 93.6%, 98.0% and 95.8%, respectively. The performance of our method is further verified by processing images with different cone photoreceptor cell densities from healthy retina and an image from an eye with diabetic retinopathy. The experimental results show that our algorithm achieved high accuracy in cone photoreceptor cell segmentation and identification in healthy retinas as well as in retina with diabetic retinopathy.