Retinal image enhancement using robust inverse diffusion equation and self-similarity filtering

Abstract

As a common ocular complication for diabetic patients, diabetic retinopathy has become an important public health problem in the world. Early diagnosis and early treatment with the help of fundus imaging technology is an effective control method. In this paper, a robust inverse diffusion equation combining a self-similarity filtering is presented to detect and evaluate diabetic retinopathy using retinal image enhancement. A flux corrected transport technique is used to control diffusion flux adaptively, which eliminates overshoots inherent in the Laplacian operation. Feature preserving denoising by the self-similarity filtering ensures a robust enhancement of noisy and blurry retinal images. Experimental results demonstrate that this algorithm can enhance important details of retinal image data effectively, affording an opportunity for better medical interpretation and subsequent processing.