Automatic Detection of Exudates in Digital Color Fundus Images Using Superpixel Multi-Feature Classification

Exudates can be regarded as one of the most prevalent clinical signs of diabetic retinopathy, and the detection of exudates has important clinical significance in diabetic retinopathy diagnosis. In this paper, a novel approach named superpixel multi-feature classification for the automatic detection of exudates is developed. First, an entire image is segmented into a series of superpixels considered as candidates. Then, a total of 20 features, including 19 multi-channel intensity features and a novel contextual feature, are proposed for characterizing each candidate. A supervised multi-variable classification algorithm is also introduced to distinguish the true exudates from the spurious candidates. Finally, a novel optic disc detection technique is designed to further improve the performance of classification accuracy. Extensive experiments are carried out on two publicly available online databases, DiaretDB1, and e-ophtha EX. Compared with other state-of-the-art approaches, the experimental results show the advantages and effectiveness of the proposed approach.