Structures of retinal blood vessels are of great importance in diagnosis and treatment of diseases that affect the eyes. Parametric Lindenmayer system (L-system) is one of the powerful rule-based methods that has a great capability for generating tree-like structures using simple rewriting rules. In this study, a novel framework, which can be used to model the retinal vasculature based on available images, has been proposed. This framework presents a solution to special instance of a general open problem, the L-system inverse problem, in which L-system rules should be obtained based on images representing a particular tree-like structure. In this study, genetic algorithm with a novel objective function based on feature matching and an L-system grammar comparison has been used along with nonlinear regression to solve the parametric L-system inverse problem. The resulting L-system growth rules have been employed to predict inaccessible vascular branches. Graphical and quantitative comparison between model results and target structures of different case studies reveals that the proposed framework can be used to generate the structure of retinal blood vessels accurately. Even in the cases lacking sufficient image data, it can provide acceptable predictions.
Keywords: L-system inverse problem; mathematical morphology; parametric L-system; retinal vasculature.