Diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy using morphological process and SVM classifier

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), the most common eye disease of the diabetic patients, occurs when small blood vessels gets damaged in the retina, due to high glucose level. It affects 80% of all patients who have had diabetes for 10 years or more, which can also lead to vision loss. Detection of diabetic retinopathy in advance, protects patients from vision loss. The major symptom of diabetic retinopathy is the exudates. Exudate is a fluid that filters from the circulatory system into lesions or area of inflammation. Detecting retinal fundus diseases in an early stage, helps the ophthalmologists apply proper treatments that might eliminate the disease or decrease the severity of it. This paper focuses on automatic detection of diabetic retinopathy through detecting exudates in colour fundus retinal images and also classifies the rigorousness of the lesions. Decision making of the severity level of the disease was performed by SVM classifier.