Deep Learning Based Quality Prediction of Retinal Fundus Images

Abstract

Abstract The accuracy of diagnosing and monitoring eye diseases using fundus imaging is strongly dependent on the quality of the images. Poor image quality can result in delays or inaccuracies in diagnosis, thus risking patient health. Image quality assessment (IQA) is crucial for regulating retinal imaging quality and assisting in successful diagnoses. In this paper, a learning-based model for evaluating the quality of fundus images is proposed. The EyeQ dataset is selected due to its ease of availability and large collection of images. The images in the dataset are classified into three labels based on their perceptual quality. Label 0 denotes good, 1 denotes fair and 2 denotes poor quality. The ResNet50 deep learning model is fine-tuned with different hyperparameters to develop two models, which are labelled as network-1 and network-2. Network-1 uses the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) optimizer and network-2 utilizes the Adam optimizer. Both networks utilise the Categorical Cross Entropy (CCE) loss function, are trained for 40 epochs and has a learning rate of 1e-3. The performance of the trained models is compared using the accuracy validation curve and the loss validation curve. Network-1 demonstrates an accuracy value of 85.8% with a loss of 0.37 and network-2 achieves an accuracy of 86.2% with a loss of 0.34. The results indicate that network-2 slightly outperforms the performance of the other in terms of accuracy, and should be preferred. Moreover, it is evident that the ResNet50 model is highly adept in appropriate feature extraction and quality evaluation of retinal fundus imaging.