Simultaneous automatic detection of optic disc and fovea on fundus photographs

To My Family ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I am really grateful to my family for their unconditional support. My father has been such a great model for me. I would like to thank my mother, who is always so supportive in every step in my life. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Joseph Reinhardt for his continuous support during my Master's study. Dr. Reinhardt is such a great advisor by always inspiring me with brilliant ideas in my research. He is always there to listen and to give advice. He could notice every small improvement in my study and never hesitate to praise it. His encouragement makes me feel more confident in my study. I admire Dr. Michael Abramoff, my another advisor greatly. He is really a great mentor who is always enthusiastic on his research area. He brought me to the ophthalmology imaging field that I found to have great interest. He encouraged me to ask questions and to express myself. I could not have come this far without his guidance. Qiao Hu. Thanks for all the great ideas and advices from them. I really enjoyed the discussions between all of us. During the past two years, I have had a great time with my labmates in the Medical Imaging Research Lab. I would like to thank Kai Ding, Panfang Hua, iii Vinayak Joshi, Tarunashree Yavarna and Kaifang Du. They are the first ones I can turn to when I have troubles in research, in study and even in daily life. Thanks to them for their help and being fun to be with. As a senior student, Kai has given me lots of help in research as well as in life. Here I would like to give my sincere thanks to him. Again, I would like to give my thanks to all the people who helped me in the past years.