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An exudate detection method for diagnosis risk of diabetic macular edema in retinal images using feature-based and supervised classification

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Abstract

The present paper aims at presenting the methodology and first results of a detection system of risk of diabetic macular edema (DME) in fundus images. The system is based on the detection of retinal exudates (Ex), whose presence in the image is clinically used for an early diagnosis of the disease. To do so, the system applies digital image processing algorithms to the retinal image in order to obtain a set of candidate regions to be Ex, which are validated by means of feature extraction and supervised classification techniques. The diagnoses provided by the system on 1058 retinographies of 529 diabetic patients at risk of having DME show that the system can operate at a level of sensitivity comparable to that of ophthalmological specialists: it achieved 0.9000 sensitivity per patient against 0.7733, 0.9133 and 0.9000 of several specialists, where the false negatives were mild clinical cases of the disease. In addition, the level of specificity reached by the system was 0.6939, high enough to screen about 70% of the patients with no evidence of DME. These values show that the system fulfils the requirements for its possible integration into a complete diabetic retinopathy pre-screening tool for the automated management of patients within a screening programme.

Diagnosis system of risk of diabetic macular edema (DME) based on exudate (Ex) detection in fundus images.

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Funding

This work was carried out as part of the Project “Automatic System for Early Diabetic Retinopathy Detection by Retinal Digital Images Analysis”, supported and funded by the Health Ministry of the Andalusian Regional Government (Spain).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic, Computer Science and Automatic Engineering, University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain

    D. Marin, M. J. Vasallo & J. M. Bravo

  2. Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería, Campus de La Rábida, Universidad de Huelva, Carretera Palos de La Frontera s/n, 21819, Palos de La Frontera, Huelva, Spain

    D. Marin

  3. Department of Mathematics, High Technical School of Engineering, University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain

    M. E. Gegundez-Arias

  4. Virgen de Macarena University Hospital of Seville, Andalusian Health Service, Seville, Spain

    B. Ponte

  5. Juan Ramon Jimenez Hospital of Huelva, Andalusian Health Service, Huelva, Spain

    F. Alvarez

  6. North Area of Sanitary Management of Cordoba, Andalusian Health Service, Cordoba, Spain

    J. Garrido & C. Ortega

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  1. D. Marin
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Correspondence to D. Marin.

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Marin, D., Gegundez-Arias, M.E., Ponte, B. et al. An exudate detection method for diagnosis risk of diabetic macular edema in retinal images using feature-based and supervised classification. Med Biol Eng Comput 56, 1379–1390 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-017-1771-2

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