Enhancing Diabetic Retinopathy Screening with Sequential Deep Learning Models

Diabetic retinopathy is a serious medical disorder that, if left untreated, can result in visual impairment or blindness. The precise and timely categorization of its severity is critical for appropriate medical management. This research describes an automated method for determining the severity of diabetic retinopathy using deep learning algorithms. The suggested methodology adopts a two-step process for identifying diabetic retinopathy and then categorizing its severity. In this technique, two pre-trained deep learning models, InceptionResNetV2 and DenseNet121, are used. For training and assessment purposes, the “APTOS 2019 Blindness Detection” dataset which consists of five severity classes is used as the foundation. To overcome class imbalance, data augmentation approaches are used to improve the model’s performance. The results of the experiment show that the strategy is effective, with an accuracy of 83.10 % and an F1 score of 82.77 %. This study contributes to the development of automated systems for assessing diabetic retinopathy, perhaps enhancing early detection and treatment.