title: Exudate detection in color retinal images for mass screening of diabetic retinopathy.
abstract: The automatic detection of exudates in color eye fundus images is an important task in applications such as diabetic retinopathy screening. The presented work has been undertaken in the framework of the TeleOphta project, whose main objective is to automatically detect normal exams in a tele-ophthalmology network, thus reducing the burden on the readers. A new clinical database, e-ophtha EX, containing precisely manually contoured exudates, is introduced. As opposed to previously available databases, e-ophtha EX is very heterogeneous. It contains images gathered within the OPHDIAT telemedicine network for diabetic retinopathy screening. Image definition, quality, as well as patients condition or the retinograph used for the acquisition, for example, are subject to important changes between different examinations. The proposed exudate detection method has been designed for this complex situation. We propose new preprocessing methods, which perform not only normalization and denoising tasks, but also detect reflections and artifacts in the image. A new candidates segmentation method, based on mathematical morphology, is proposed. These candidates are characterized using classical features, but also novel contextual features. Finally, a random forest algorithm is used to detect the exudates among the candidates. The method has been validated on the e-ophtha EX database, obtaining an AUC of 0.95. It has been also validated on other databases, obtaining an AUC between 0.93 and 0.95, outperforming state-of-the-art methods.
authors: Centre for Mathematical Morphology, Mathematics and Systems Department, MINES ParisTech, 35 rue Saint-Honoré, Fontainebleau, France. Electronic address: xiwei.zhang@mines-paristech.fr.
authors: Xiwei
authors: X
authors: Zhang
authors: Centre for Mathematical Morphology, Mathematics and Systems Department, MINES ParisTech, 35 rue Saint-Honoré, Fontainebleau, France.
authors: Guillaume
authors: G
authors: Thibault
authors: Centre for Mathematical Morphology, Mathematics and Systems Department, MINES ParisTech, 35 rue Saint-Honoré, Fontainebleau, France. Electronic address: etienne.decenciere@mines-paristech.fr.
authors: Etienne
authors: E
authors: Decencière
authors: Centre for Mathematical Morphology, Mathematics and Systems Department, MINES ParisTech, 35 rue Saint-Honoré, Fontainebleau, France.
authors: Beatriz
authors: B
authors: Marcotegui
authors: ADCIS, 3 rue Martin Luther King, 14280 Saint-Contest, France.
authors: Bruno
authors: B
authors: Laÿ
authors: ADCIS, 3 rue Martin Luther King, 14280 Saint-Contest, France.
authors: Ronan
authors: R
authors: Danno
authors: Télécom Bretagne, Institut Mines-Télécom, ITI Department, Brest, France; Inserm UMR 1101 LaTIM U650, bâtiment I, CHRU Morvan, 29200 Brest, France.
authors: Guy
authors: G
authors: Cazuguel
authors: Inserm UMR 1101 LaTIM U650, bâtiment I, CHRU Morvan, 29200 Brest, France.
authors: Gwénolé
authors: G
authors: Quellec
authors: Télécom Bretagne, Institut Mines-Télécom, ITI Department, Brest, France; Inserm UMR 1101 LaTIM U650, bâtiment I, CHRU Morvan, 29200 Brest, France.
authors: Mathieu
authors: M
authors: Lamard
authors: Service d'ophtalmologie, hôpital Lariboisière, APHP, 2, rue Ambroise-Paré, 75475 Paris cedex 10, France.
authors: Pascale
authors: P
authors: Massin
authors: Direction de la politique médicale, parcours des patients et organisations médicales innovantes télémédecine, Assistance publique Hôpitaux de Paris, 3, avenue Victoria, 75184 Paris cedex 04, France.
authors: Agnès
authors: A
authors: Chabouis
authors: Service d'ophtalmologie, hôpital Lariboisière, APHP, 2, rue Ambroise-Paré, 75475 Paris cedex 10, France.
authors: Zeynep
authors: Z
authors: Victor
authors: Service d'ophtalmologie, hôpital Lariboisière, APHP, 2, rue Ambroise-Paré, 75475 Paris cedex 10, France.
authors: Ali
authors: A
authors: Erginay
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D002138:Calibration; D003116:Color; D003930:Diabetic Retinopathy / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005122:Exudates and Transudates; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
keywords: Diabetic retinopathy screening; Exudates segmentation; Mathematical morphology; e-Ophtha EX database