COMPUTER HYBRID SYSTEM OF HEMORRHAGE (HES) DETECTION USED FOR AIDED DIAGNOSIS OF DIABETIC RETINOPATHY

Abstract

Diabetes cause’s metabolic and physiological abnormalities in the retina and the changes suggest a role for inflammation in the development of diabetic retinopathy. Abnormal blood vessels can form in the back of the eye of a person with diabetes. These new blood vessels are weaker and prone to breaking and causing hemorrhage (HEs). Diabetic retinopathy (DR) accounts for 31.5–54% of all cases of vitreous hemorrhage in adults in the world. Therefore, detection of HEs is still a challenging factor task for computer-aided diagnostics of DR. Many researchers have developed advanced algorithms of hemorrhages detection using fundus images. In this paper, a robust and computationally efficient approach for HEs with different shape and size detection and classification is presented. First, brightness correction and contrast enhancement are applied to fundus images. Second, candidate hemorrhages are extracted by using an unsupervised classification algorithm. Third, an approach based on mathematical morphology is carried out for vascular network and macula segmentation. Finally, a total of 13 HEs features are considered in this study and selected for classification. The proposed method is evaluated on 419 fundus images of DIARETDB0, DIARETDB1 and MESSIDOR databases. Experimental results show that overall average sensitivity, specificity, predictive value and accuracy for hemorrhage in lesion level are 98.90%, 99.66%, 97.63% and 99.56%, respectively. The results show that the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in detection of hemorrhages. These results indicate that this new method may improve the performance of diagnosis of DR system.