@article{MAKHILLIJEPE201913325320,
    title = {An Efficient Vessel Segmentation Based on Hierarchical Swarm Optimization Scheme and
Mean Shift Clustering with Vessel Connectivities for Retinal Images},
    journal = {International Journal of Electrical and Power Engineering},
    volume = {13},
    number = {3},
    pages = {36-49},
    year = {2019},
    issn = {1990-7958},
    doi = {ijepe.2019.36.49},
    url = {https://makhillpublications.co/view-article.php?issn=1990-7958&doi=ijepe.2019.36.49},
    author = {G.V.,P.D. and},
    keywords = {segmentation,Retinal blood vessel,clustering,vessel connectivity,HCSO,Boltzmann equation},
    abstract = {Retinal images provide early signs of diabetic
retinopathy, glaucoma and hypertension. These signs can
be investigated based on micro aneurysms or smaller
vessels. These studies require accurate tracing of retinal
vessel structure from fundus images in an automated
manner. However, the existing threshold based
segmentation encounters great difficulties such as the
detected edges are consisted of discrete pixels and may be
incomplete or discontinuous and computationally
expensive. To solve above problem, Hierarchical Cat
Swarm behaviour based Optimization scheme (HCSO)
with Mean Shift Clustering (MSC) algorithm is proposed
in this study. In diagnosis, the vessel angles and lengths
are changed particularly in junctions and it’s detected by
using vessel segmentation. Also the bifurcations and
crossings are disconnected and the vessel paths are
interrupted in retinal image. So, the proposed system
focused these kinds of junction problems. Initially, the
input image is pre-processed using top hat filtering to
enhance the accurate vessel extraction. Then, the
geometric structure based features are extracted by using
morphological scheme. Here, the junction problem is
analyzed through a connectivity kernel. The experimental
result shows the proposed work has efficient and effective
vessel segmentation and can be useful for image-aided
diagnosis systems and further applications.}
    }