Automated diagnosis of Age-related macular degeneration from color retinal fundus images

Automated image processing has the potential to assist in the early detection of Age-related macular degeneration, by detecting changes in blood vessel and patterns in the retina. Age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) is gradual loss of vision by oxidation of macula and most common cause of irreversible vision loss. The ARMD can be classified into 1. Dry macular degeneration 2. Wet macular degeneration. The purpose of this paper is to diagnose the retinal disease ARMD and to classify the two types. The extent of the disease spread in the retina can be identified by extracting the features of the retina. Detection of ARMD disease is done using Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) method and the two types are classified and diagnosed successfully. The results showed a sensitivity of 94.00% for the classifier and specificity of 95.00%.