Detection of laser marks in retinal images

Eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy are sometimes treated with recourse to laser based cauterization. The marks left by the action of the laser on the surface of the retina can cause misbehaviors of automated retinal diagnostic systems. It is therefore highly desirable to be able to detect the presence of laser marks left behind by such treatments and use that information in the first steps of automatic retinal diagnostics to prevent further unnecessary processing. In this paper we present an attempt to detect the presence of laser marks using an automated detection algorithm and present some preliminary results on its performance.