Assessment of Severity Level for Diabetic Macular Oedema Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Abstract

The macula is an imperative part present in our human visual system which is most responsible for clear and colour vision. For the people suffering from diabetes, the various parts of the body including the retina of the eye are affected. These retinal damages cause swelling and other abnormalities nearby macula. The pathologies in macula due to diabetes are called Diabetic Macular oEdema (DME). It affects patients’ vision that may lead to vision loss. It can be overcome by advance identification of causes for swelling. The major causes for the swelling are neovascularization and other abnormalities occurring in the blood vessels nearby the macula. The aim of this work is to avoid vision loss by detecting the presence of abnormalities in macula in advance. The pathologies present in the abnormal images are detected by image segmentation technique viz. Fuzzy K-means algorithm. The classification is done by two different classifiers namely Cascade Neural Network and Partial Least Square which are employed to identify whether the image is normal or abnormal. The results of both the classifiers are compared with respect to classifier accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. The classifier accuracies of Cascade Neural Network and Partial Least Square are 96.84% and 94.36%, respectively. The information about the severity of the disease and the localization of pathologies are very useful to the ophthalmologist for diagnosing the disease and apply proper treatments to the patients to avoid the formation of any lesion and prevent vision loss.