Extraction of mole from eye sclera using object area detection algorithm

Moles are used for identifying a person and can be located on any part of the human body. Mole growth may cause melanoma and cancer. Early detection and growth can help to avoid cancer and loss of visibility. The proposed algorithm is used for detecting moles in the human eye sclera. An eye mole image is the input image for the proposed algorithm. This input image is preprocessed using gray-scale conversion and a median filter. The filtered image undergoes binary conversion and morphological operations. Functions such as morphological dilation, strel, dilation, area close, binary complement, and border clear are applied to retain the mole area in the eye image. An object area detection (OAD) algorithm is applied to search the regions of the mole boundary. It identifies the mole boundary and computes the regions for mole segmentation. The segmented moles are validated within an average execution time of 0.903s.

I. Introduction

The human eye is a sense organ that enables vision. The outermost layer of the eye is composed of cornea and sclera. The cornea is smaller in size and located in the front part of the eye. The sclera is the larger part and covers the rest of the eye. The cornea and the sclera are connected by a ring called limbus. The middle layer consists of the choroid, ciliary muscle, and iris. The innermost layer consists of the retina. It is not directly visible and can be viewed using an ophthalmoscope. The retina consists of an optic disc, macula, fovea, and blood vessels. The lens is located between the iris and the retina. The function of the lens is similar to that of a camera lens; the lens reflects the received light and is flexible and balances on the ciliary muscle. The ciliary muscle is triangular in shape and covers the vitreous body. The aqueous humour is filled in the anterior chamber and the posterior chamber. The posterior chamber is located between the iris, which forms the front portion of the eye [12], and the lens.