Detection of Diabetic Retinopathy in Fundus Photographs

Diabetic retinopathy is one of the leading disabling chronic diseases, and one of the leading causes of preventable blindness in the world. Early diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy enables timely treatment and in order to achieve it a major effort will have to be invested into screening programs and especially into automated screening programs. For automated screening programs to work robustly efficient image processing and analysis algorithms have to be developed. This work examines recent literature on digital image processing in the field of early detection of diabetic retinopathy using fundus photographs. Algorithms were categorized into 5 groups (image preprocessing, localization and segmentation of the optic disk, segmentation of the retinal vasculature, localization of the macula and fovea, localization and segmentation of diabetic retinopathy pathologies). Diabetic retinopathy pathologies were further categorized into several groups. In this paper several different databases are presented and their characteristics discussed. Keywords—diabetic retinopathy, image processing, image analysis, optic disk localization, blood vessel segmentation, microaneurysms, exudates, hemorrhages, neovascularization