Patent ID: 6714672
Filing Date: 2004-03-30
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
A method for evaluating stereo images of an eye fundus, comprising the steps of:obtaining at least two images; correcting illumination errors in the images; adjusting epipolar lines associated with the images such that the images are vertically aligned; removing image occlusion errors in the images; and performing a matching analysis on the images; wherein the images are a first original image and a second original image and have at least some overlap area, and the step of adjusting epipolar lines comprises the substeps of: creating a left and a right search column on at least one of the original images, such that at least one of the columns includes at least part of the overlap area; creating two sets of gray-scale sub-images, one set of sub-images for each of the two original images; pairing the sub-images generated from the first original image with sub-images from the second original image such that a sub-image pair shares the same assigned color coordinate; running a matching algorithm on each point in the right and left search column of each sub-image pair; calculating vertical shift between points identified as matching by the matching algorithm; selecting points with identical vertical shift values; and aligning the points that were not selected in the image by extrapolating the resulting calculated vertical shift values for each column.