Time-frequency analysis is often used to study non stationary multicomponent signals, which can be viewed as the surperimposition of modes, associated with ridges in the TF plane. To understand such signals, it is essential to identify their constituent modes. This is often done by performing ridge detection in the time-frequency plane which is then followed by mode retrieval. Unfortunately, existing ridge detectors are often not enough robust to noise therefore hampering mode retrieval. In this paper, we therefore develop a novel approach to ridge detection and mode retrieval based on the analysis of the short-time Fourier transform of multicomponent signals in the presence of noise, which will prove to be much more robust than state-of-the-art methods based on the same time-frequency representation.