Diabetic retinopathy is a disease which has impacted millions of people, the aim is to build a machine learning model that will speed up the detection process of the disease. And not only that, also to tell at which stage the disease is at. Machine learning (ML) model which will tell if a patient has an diabetic retinopathy or not, this will eventually reduce the number of doctors to do this task with the help of image recognition. The aim is to avoid blindness and detect the diabetic retinopathy in its early stage. The class 1 will contain a picture of the back of the eye which is graded as Mild to diabetic retinopathy. class 2 moderate, class 3 No_DR class 4 proliferate_dr and class 5 severe.
Diabetic retinopathy is a condition which affects people who have diabetes, in early stages it’s symptoms are less but then when it’s treatable, to screen them early on before a patient loses his/her vision. And It’s also the fastest growing cause of blindness, with nearly 415 million diabetic patients at risk worldwide.
Basically what happens with diabetic retinopathy is diabetes starts to damage the blood vessels that supply the retina of the human eye. From the above figure you can see the retina it’s a very thin and complex layer which is positioned back of the eye. Also the inner wall of the eye retina has special photoreceptor cells, which helps convert light to chemical and electrical energy sent to the brain via retina cells.
We can say that retina is like a photo-film of a camera. If a photo - film has a whole in it we won’t be able to see the picture clearly. And if the retina is damaged centrally, the macula there is irretrievable loss of sight.
Macula is part of the retina which is present at the back of the retina, it is responsible for all our central vision, colour vision and fine details of what we see, it is very important that central macula area is preserved for treatment of diabetic retinopathy.
Two major types of damage are as follows :
Proliferative Retinopathy : In proliferative retinopathy very small blood vessels start to grow from the surface of the retina.
Maculopathy : it is caused due to leakage within the macula, which destroys retinal photoreceptor and nerve cells which reduces the vision power of an eye.
Treatment is required if fluid starts to leak into the macula. First step is to find out the leaking blood vessels, laser treatment is applied to seal the leakage, road to recovery is slow as it takes around 3 months. Grading of retinopathy : Retinopathy is graded according to severity Minimal / Mild / Moderate - No immediate threat to sight. Proliferative / Maculopathy - sight threatened or already lost cause. (laser treatment is required) Advanced - Irretrievable sight loss