Automated Detection System for Diabetic Retinopathy Using Two Field Fundus Photography

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a leading cause of vision loss, caused by damage to the retina from complications of diabetes. Analysis of the retinal photographs for key characteristics of DR can result in early diagnosis and better management of DR. This paper presents a method for automated analysis and classification of the retina as DR or non-DR using two-field mydriatic fundus photography. The optic disc region is located by multi-level wavelet decomposition and recursive region growing from an automatically identified seed point. Blood vessels are extracted by applying histogram analysis on the two median filtered images. Red lesions are detected using three stage intensity transformation and white lesions from multi-level histogram analysis. The final classification of the retina as DR or non-DR is based on an aggregate of the lesions extracted from each image. The proposed method has been validated against diagnosis by a panel of expert ophthalmologists on images from 368 patients. The observed sensitivity and specificity were 80% and 50% respectively. The results show that automated screening based on two-field photography can be applied in routine screening.