FILM: finding the location of microaneurysms on the retina.

Diabetes retinopathy (DR) is one of the leading cause of blindness among people suffering from diabetes. It is a lesion based disease which starts off as small red spots on the retina. These small red lesions are known as microaneurysms (MA). These microaneurysms gradually increase in size as the DR progresses, which eventually leads to blindness. Thus, DR can be prevented at a very early stage by eliminating the retinal microaneurysms. However, elimination of MA is a two step process. The first step requires detecting the presence of MA on the retina. The second step involves pinpointing the location of MA on the retina. Even though, these two steps are interdependent, there is no model available that can perform both steps simultaneously. Most of the models perform the first step successfully, while the second step is performed by opthamologists manually. Hence we have proposed an object detection model that integrates the two steps by detecting (first step) and pinpointing (second step) the MA on the retina simultaneously. This would help the opthamologists in directly finding the exact location of MA on the retina, thereby simplifying the process and eliminating any manual intervention. © Korean Society of Medical and Biological Engineering 2019.