Novel Framework for Enhanced Learning-based Classification of Lesion in Diabetic Retinopathy

Abstract

Diabetic retinopathy is an adverse medical condition resulting from a high level of blood sugar potentially affecting the retina and leading to permanent vision loss in its advanced stage of progression. A literature review is conducted to assess the effectiveness of existing approaches to find that Convolution Neural Network (CNN) has been frequently adopted for analyzing the fundus retinal image for detection and classification. However, existing scientific methods are mainly inclined towards achieving accuracy in their learning techniques without much deeper investigation of possibilities to improve the methodology of type using CNN. Therefore, the proposed scheme introduces a computational framework where a simplified feature enhancement operation is carried out, resulting in artifact-free images with better features. The enhanced image is then subjected to CNN to perform multiclass categorization of potential stages of diabetic retinopathy to see if it outperforms existing schemes.