Retina - Retinal Blood Supply

Retinal Blood Supply

There are two circulations, both supplied by the ophthalmic artery. The uveal circulation consists of arteries entering the globe outside the optic nerve, these supply the uvea and outer and middle layers of the retina. The retinal circulation, on the other hand, supplies the inner layer of the retina and passes with the optic nerve as a branch of the ophthalmic artery called the central artery of the retina. The unique structure of the blood vessels in the retina has been used for biometric identification.

The vascular topographical geometry in the retina is known to conform to structural principles that are related to certain physical properties. The analysis of the geometrical structure is very important as deviations from the optimal principles may indicate some cardiovascular diseases, such as hypertension and atherosclerosis; a comprehensive analysis is given by Patton et al. (2006). The identification of vascular bifurcations is one of the basic steps in this analysis. Azzopardi and Petkov (2011) propose a computer vision algorithm that automatically detects these retinal features. Their results are evaluated against the ground truth data of vascular bifurcations of retinal fundus images that are obtained from the DRIVE data set.