Enhancing Diabetic Retinopathy Detection Using Pixel Color Amplification and EfficientNetV2: A Novel Approach for Early Disease Identification

Abstract

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a severe complication of diabetes, causing damage to retinal blood vessels due to high blood sugar levels. Early detection is crucial but often requires significant time and expertise from ophthalmologists. While artificial intelligence (AI) and image recognition hold promise for DR detection, inconsistent image quality poses a challenge. Our study presents a novel technique that integrates pixel color amplification and EfficientNetV2 to enhance fundus image attributes, aiming to address issues related to image quality and achieving superior performance in DR detection. Leveraging EfficientNetV2, an advanced convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture, we achieve 84% multiclass accuracy and 99% binary accuracy, surpassing various other CNN models, including VGG16-fc1, VGG16-fc2, NASNet, Xception, Inception ResNetV2, EfficientNet, InceptionV3, MobileNet, and ResNet50. Our research tackles the critical challenge of early detection of DR, essential for preventing vision loss. This advancement holds the potential to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of DR classification, potentially alleviating the burden on medical professionals and ultimately improving the quality of life for individuals at risk of vision loss.