Automated microaneurysms detection in fundus images using image segmentation

Diabetic retinopathy is one of the complicated diseases which occurs in diabetic patients when the affects damage the retina. The eyes vision can lead to be lost in case of late treatment. Microaneurysms are the earliest detectable abnormalities of diabetic retinopathy, so the automated detection of the lesions is essential and useful task. This paper proposed a simple method to detect microaneurysms based on its characteristics in fundus images using some techniques in image segmentation. First, we preprocessed to reduce image noise and improve the contrast. Then we segmented them using Canny edges detection and maximum entropy thresholding. The characteristics of microaneurysms which appear as small red dots and circular shape are the specific points to discriminate them from the other lesions as well as the anatomical structures of the fundus image by applying area and eccentricity methods. Finally, the morphological operation was applied to mark out these symptoms. The results were analysis by ophthalmologist in order to define system accuracy and preciseness. According to results of comparison, we found that the accuracy is 90 % and the average processing time is 9.53 seconds per image.