Detection of Age-Related Macular Degeneration using open CV for Image Processing Applications

Age related macular degeneration is damage of the macula area and is commonly observed in people with age 50 and above, therefore called age related Macular degeneration, AMD. If AMD is diagnosed at an early stage, degeneration laser treatment can help some people to prevent further deterioration of macula. The authors have developed a novel algorithm for automatic detection of AMD using image processing techniques. The algorithm locates disease affected pixels on macula and evaluates the degenerated area on the macula. Intel's Open CV Library is used to implement the algorithm. The aim of developing the algorithm on open CV is to embed the same on ARM based low power single board computer system. The algorithm is implemented on Linux-Ubuntu platform to test retinal images for the detection of AMD. The algorithm has been tested with 25 normal and 25 AMD clinical images and has yielded an accuracy of 94%.