Abstract
Diabetic retinopathy is a major cause of blindness. Proliferative diabetic retinopathy is a result of severe vascular complication and is visible as neovascularization of the retina. Automatic detection of such new vessels would be useful for the severity grading of diabetic retinopathy, and it is an important part of screening process to identify those who may require immediate treatment for their diabetic retinopathy. We proposed a novel new vessels detection method including statistical texture analysis (STA), high order spectrum analysis (HOS), fractal analysis (FA), and most importantly we have shown that by incorporating their associated interactions the accuracy of new vessels detection can be greatly improved. To assess its performance, the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy (AUC) are obtained. They are 96.3%, 99.1% and 98.5% (99.3%), respectively. It is found that the proposed method can improve the accuracy of new vessels detection significantly over previous methods. The algorithm can be automated and is valuable to detect relatively severe cases of diabetic retinopathy among diabetes patients.
Highlights
The retinal vasculature is an observable circulatory system in the eye [1,2,3,4] without using any invasive procedure, which provides useful information about the microcirculation in the body
We present a novel approach of detecting neovascularization using an integrated technique of statistical texture analysis (STA), high order spectrum analysis (HOS) and fractal analysis (FA)
The receiver operating curve (ROC) was used to assess the performance of neovascularization detection and the area under curve, sensitivity and specificity are obtained to evaluate the classification of neovascularization detection
Summary
The retinal vasculature is an observable circulatory system in the eye [1,2,3,4] without using any invasive procedure, which provides useful information about the microcirculation in the body. Neovascularization shape and size varies, presenting extra challenges and requirements for the development of automated detection systems. Neovascularization is one of the hallmarks of proliferative diabetic retinopathy. It is a process whereby the vasogenic factors respond to hypoxia leading to new vessels development. The new vessels are defective and leak fluid (edema/true exudates) and red cells (hemorrhages). This in turn stimulates connective tissue growth. Either in the form of neovascularization on the disc (NVD) or neovascularization elsewhere (NVE), it prompts a mandatory referral to a retinal specialist or ophthalmologist.
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