title: Towards automatic detection of age-related macular degeneration in retinal fundus images.
abstract: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. The disease is highly associated with age, and becoming increasingly prevalent in our aging societies. Drusen is a pathological feature that is well-associated with AMD. In this paper, we present a method of detecting drusen in retinal fundus images. The method first determines the location of the macula, which is used as a landmark for a clinical drusen grading overlay. Subsequently, regions of drusen are identified though a maximal region-based pixel intensity approach via RGB and HSV channels. Methods of reducing the effect of retinal and choroidal vessels are also described. The system is tested on a sample set of 16 fundus images from a clinical study, with half having drusen. Experiments on the results show a sensitivity and specificity of 0.75 on the test image set.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Infocomm Research, A*STAR, Singapore.
authors.forename: Ziyang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Damon W K
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Kap Luk
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: Tien Yin
authors.initials: TY
authors.lastname: Wong
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging; D001331:Automation; D005654:Fundus Oculi; D006801:Humans; D008268:Macular Degeneration / Q000175:diagnosis*; D015593:Retinal Drusen