An automatic detection of Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy

The Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy (PDR) is a stage of retinopathy where blood vessels proliferate i.e. grows. The indication of PDR is neovascularization, the growth of abnormal new vessels. Here, first vessel segmentation is done by converting image into binary image. So that vessel and non-vessel part is seperated. By using morphological operation and structuring element as line, straight vessels are detected and removed. So remaining part is new vessels. These morphological operations are taken for multiple orientations like 45°, 90°, 135°, 180°. Straight vessels were removed to distinguish new vessels from normal vasculature. Morphological thinning is used to thin only new vessels. Feature extraction is done by windowing image into 50 by 50 in order to calculate number of vessel pixels in every window. If numbers of vessel pixels are greater than threshold value then PDR is detected.