Segmentation of Retinal Blood Vessels Using Focal Attention Convolution Blocks in a UNET

Abstract

Retinal vein segmentation is a crucial task that helps in the early detection of health problems, making it an essential area of research. With recent advancements in artificial intelligence, we can now develop highly reliable and efficient models for this task. CNN has been the traditional choice for image analysis tasks. However, the emergence of visual transformers with their unique attention mechanism has proved to be a game-changer. However, visual transformers require a large amount of data and computational power, making them unsuitable for tasks with limited data and resources. To deal with this constraint, we adapted the attention module of visual transformers and integrated it into a CNN-based UNET network, achieving superior performance compared to other models. The model achieved a 0.89 recall, 0.98 AUC, 0.97 accuracy, and 0.97 sensitivity on various datasets, including HRF, Drive, LES-AV, CHASE-DB1, Aria-A, Aria-D, Aria-C, IOSTAR, STARE and DRGAHIS. Moreover, the model can recognize blood vessels accurately, regardless of camera type or the original image resolution, ensuring that it generalizes well. This breakthrough in retinal vein segmentation could improve the early diagnosis of several health conditions.