Diabetic retinopathy (DR) & Glaucoma are the most two common diseases and leading cause of incurable blindness throughout the world. The rate of diabetes is increasing throughout the world. It is estimated that 75% of people with these diseases live in developing countries. In developing countries like India, most of the population resides in rural areas where availability of an expert ophthalmologist or awareness of these diseases is near to null.
Considering the above data and non-availability of medical experts, there is an urgent need to bridge this void as poor vision can impact the personal life of an individual and have a telling effect on his/her productivity. If detected at an early stage, appropriate solutions can be prescribed which will go a long way in reducing the levels of visual impairment. There is a need to expand medical services to rural areas and develop and implement appropriate prevention and control interventions and raise awareness on regular eye check-ups. Hence there is a need to develop an automatic and portable device for retinal pathology which can be operated by a normal computer operator in real time to avoid this incurable blindness throughout the world.
This proposed project is an attempt to boost the Tele-Ophthalmology applications in India in the following manner:
Help in computer based identification of retinal disease like Diabetic Retinopathy and Glaucoma in remote places where there is less medical assistance.
Automated detection of Diabetic Retinopathy and Glaucoma can reduce the grading cost and thereby make the whole screening process less expensive.
Such cases may be identified with automatic computer aided tools and only the abnormal images will be sent to the Medical research centres of further action and medical diagnosis.
To ensure that in the transmission process of Tele-Ophthalmology the medical images are clearly identified by inserting the patient information in the image itself by digital watermarking.
These developments will greatly boost the Tele-ophthalmology applications which are a major requirement in a big country like India where 80% of population lives in rural areas where medical services are difficult to access.
