Exudate detection in eye digital fundus images using neural networks

In this paper we show that a properly trained neural network can be used to detect exudate lesions associated with diabetic retinopathy in digital fundus images of the eye. Image pre-processing is crucial for good performance and includes colour normalization to reduce the variability of colours found in fundus images as well as principal component analysis for dimensionality reduction. Furthermore, blood vessels and the optic disc are segmented out of the retina images in order to avoid confusion with exudate regions. The remaining image regions are used to train a backpropagation neural network to distinguish exudate from non-exudate areas. Experimental results based on a image set with known exudate locations confirm the efficacy of our approach.