Detection of abnormal blood vessels in diabetic retinopathy based on brightness variations in SDOCT retinal images

Diabetic retinopathy(DR) is the most common diabetic eye disease, which occurs due to damage in the blood vessels of the retina. Sometimes these vessels swell and leak fluid or even close off completely; abnormal new blood vessels grow on the surface of the retina during proliferative stage which leads to loss of vision. Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SDOCT) is a well accepted clinical standard for diagnosing the pathological changes in optic disc and retinal layers. In this proposed work retinal layer is segmented and the abnormal blood vessels are located at the proliferative stage of DR based on brightness variations of OCT layers. Retinal Nerve Fiber layer (RNFL) thickening shows the presence of blood vessels and shadows at the boundary of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) layer shows the location of the blood vessels. To segment the abnormal blood vessels in the SDOCT retinal images MATLAB® software image processing tool is used.