Automated Multi-Lesion Detection for Referable Diabetic Retinopathy in Indigenous Health Care

An automated screening enables the identification of patients who need further medical attention. This study aimed to classify retinal images of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples utilizing an automated computer-based multi-lesion eye screening program for diabetic retinopathy.

The multi-lesion classifier was trained on 1,014 images from the São Paulo Eye Hospital and tested on retinal images containing no DR-related lesion, single lesions or multiple types of lesions from the Inala Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health care centre. The automated multi-lesion classifier has the potential to enhance the efficiency of clinical practice delivering diabetic retinopathy screening. Our program does not necessitate image samples for training from any specific ethnic group or population being assessed and is independent of image pre- or post-processing to identify retinal lesions.