Computer-assisted grading of diabetic macular edema on retinal color fundus images

Diabetic macular edema (DME) is one of the vision-impairing manifestations of Diabetic Retinopathy (DR). Early detection and treatment of DME can prevent permanent vision loss in people suffering from DR. However, the clinical detection through biomicroscopy is time-consuming. In this paper, a computer-assisted grading method has been proposed to determine the DME severity based on the spatial distribution of exudative lesions around macula. The region around macula is classified into zonal levels and severity of the DME is graded based on the presence of exudative lesions in each zone. The proposed method has been evaluated on diverse public and local databases, and produced the sensitivity of 89.54% for 9.1 false positive per image (FPPI) for exudate detection and 98.8% accuracy for DME grading.