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Analysis of foveal avascular zone for grading of diabetic retinopathy severity based on curvelet transform

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Abstract

Introduction

Diabetes disturbs many parts of the body. One of the most common and serious complications of this disease is Diabetic Retinopathy (DR). In this process, blood vessels of the retina are damaged and leak into the retina. In later stages, DR affects the fovea. In these cases, the shape and size of the Foveal Avascular Zone (FAZ), which is responsible for central vision, can become abnormal and contribute to loss of vision.

Methods

In this paper, appropriate features are extracted from the FAZ by means of Digital Curvelet Transform (DCUT) and used to grade of retina images into normal and abnormal classes. For this reason, DCUT is applied on enhanced color fundus images and its coefficients are modified to highlight vessels and the optic disc (OD). Through the use of this information about the anatomical location of the FAZ related to the OD and detected end points of segmented vessels, the FAZ is extracted. Then, the area and regularity of the extracted FAZ is determined and used for DR grading.

Results

Our method was tested on a database including 45 normal and 30 abnormal color fundus images, and showed sensitivity of 93 % for DR grading and specificity of 86 % for distinguishing between normal and abnormal cases.

Conclusions

This technique showed high reproducibility in characterizing the size and contour of the FAZ in diabetic maculopathy, thus it has the potential to serve as a powerful tool in the automated assessment and grading of images in a routine clinical setting.

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Conflict of interest

The authors disclose that there is no conflict of interest, including any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work.

Financial support

This work is supported by Isfahan University of Medical Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biomedical Engineering Department, Medical Image & Signal Processing Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

    Shirin Hajeb Mohammad Alipour & Hossein Rabbani

  2. Ophthalmology Department, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

    Mohammadreza Akhlaghi

  3. Biomedical Engineering Department, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

    Alireza Mehri Dehnavi

  4. Physiology Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran

    Shaghayegh Haghjooy Javanmard

Authors
  1. Shirin Hajeb Mohammad Alipour
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  2. Hossein Rabbani
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  3. Mohammadreza Akhlaghi
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  4. Alireza Mehri Dehnavi
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  5. Shaghayegh Haghjooy Javanmard
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Correspondence to Hossein Rabbani.

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Alipour, S.H.M., Rabbani, H., Akhlaghi, M. et al. Analysis of foveal avascular zone for grading of diabetic retinopathy severity based on curvelet transform. Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol 250, 1607–1614 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-012-2093-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-012-2093-6

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