Computerised approaches for the detection of diabetic retinopathy using retinal fundus images: a survey

• Published in: Pattern analysis and applications : PAA Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 927 - 961
• Main Authors: Soomro, Toufique Ahmed, Gao, Junbin, Khan, Tariq, Hani, Ahmad Fadzil M., Khan, Mohammad A. U., Paul, Manoranjan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer London 01.11.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Abnormalities; Algorithms; Blood vessels; Computer Science; Computer vision; Damage detection; Diabetes; Diabetic retinopathy; Image classification; Image detection; Image processing; Medical imaging; Medical personnel; Ophthalmology; Pattern Recognition; Pixels; Retina; Retinal images; Survey; Retinal databases; Overview of DR detection imaging techniques; Retinal images
• ISSN: 1433-7541; 1433-755X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10044-017-0630-y

Eye-related disease such as diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a medical ailment in which the retina of the human eye is smashed because of damage to the tiny retinal blood vessels in the retina. Ophthalmologists identify DR based on various features such as the blood vessels, textures and pathologies. With the rapid development of methods of analysis of biomedical images and advanced computing techniques, image processing-based software for the detection of eye disease has been widely used as an important tool by ophthalmologists. In particular, computer vision-based methods are growing rapidly in the field of medical images analysis and are appropriate to advance ophthalmology. These tools depend entirely on visual analysis to identify abnormalities in Retinal Fundus images. During the past two decades, exciting improvement in the development of DR detection computerised systems has been observed. This paper reviews the development of analysing retinal images for the detection of DR in three aspects: automatic algorithms (classification or pixel to pixel methods), detection methods of pathologies from retinal fundus images, and extraction of blood vessels of retinal fundus image algorithms for the detection of DR. The paper presents a detailed explanation of each problem with respect to retinal images. The current techniques that are used to analyse retinal images and DR detection issues are also discussed in detail and recommendations are made for some future directions.