An Image Processing System For Automatic Retina Diagnosis

Abstract

We are developing a system designed around an IBM PC-AT to perform automatic diagnosis of diseases from images of the retina. The system includes hardware for color image capture and display. We are developing software for performing image enhancement, image analysis, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. The design goal of the system is to automatically segment a digitized photograph of the retina into its normal and abnormal structures, identifying these objects by various features such as color, size, shape, texture, orientation, etc., and ultimately to provide a list of possible diagnoses with varying degrees of probability. We will discuss algorithms used to identify markedly different objects and to distinguish between those objects which appear very similar to the trained eye. Implementation of these algorithms, which are typically applied to areas such as remote sensing, terrain mapping and robotics, has been very successful when applied to color images of the retina.