Automatic eye screening is a cutting-edge method that leverages technology and automated processes to assess the health of an individual's eyes. It involves specialized equipment and software to detect eye conditions such as myopia, hyperopia, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and more. Automating the screening process, streamlines the evaluation, enabling early detection and timely intervention, which is crucial for maintaining good vision and preventing vision-related problems.

This approach is typically employed in clinical settings, like eye clinics and optometrist offices, facilitating quicker and more precise assessments. It not only improves the accessibility of eye care but also contributes to the overall quality of healthcare by ensuring that eye conditions are identified and managed effectively, enhancing the chances of preserving and enhancing a person's visual health.

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is one of the fastest growing causes of blindness in the world which occurs due to a complication of Diabetes. Approximately 463 million people in the world suffer from Diabetes and each one of them has a risk of going blind due to DR. It is caused by damage to the blood vessels of the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye (retina). The longer you have Diabetes and the less controlled your blood sugar is, the more likely you are to develop this eye complication.In the beginning, Diabetic Retinopathy may exhibit no symptoms or only mild vision problems. However, if left untreated it can eventually cause complete blindness. The condition can develop in anyone who has been diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 Diabetes. Diabetic Retinopathy affects up to 80% of patients who suffer from Diabetes for over 20 years. Each year in the United States, Diabetic Retinopathy accounts for 12% of all new cases of blindness. It is also the leading cause of blindness in people aged 20 to 64. Of these cases, at least 90% of new cases could be reduced with proper treatment and monitoring of the eyes. The key to prevent blindness is regular screening (once a year as recommended by medical officers worldwide) because this condition is asymptomatic, i.e. the condition develops without any symptoms at first and the patient may get to a point of vision loss at the final stage of the disease which is irreversible.

DR can be diagnosed by visual examination of retinal images to detect most common pathological features such as microaneurysms, hemorrhage, exudates and neovascularization. This process is manual and time consuming and the outcomes depend on the examiner’s perspective. Thus, there's a potential bias in the examiner’s decision.Once the pathological signs are identified, these examinations can be used to identify different disease stages such as “No DR”, “Moderate DR’’, “Proliferative DR” etc.

With the increasing number of Diabetic patients in the world, the need for eye screening is growing worldwide. A shortage of ophthalmologists who are expertized in eye screening has become a major problem worldwide. In a US study, it was estimated that by 2029, around 20% of the American population will be over the age of sixty-five. Therefore, it has been presumed that the demand for ophthalmology care in the next two decades will be higher than ever before because diseases like cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration and DR are all age-related eye diseases.

Furthermore, it is expected that the number of DR patients will rise upto 191 million by 2030. Even in rural areas of Sri Lanka, a shortage of doctors who are specialized in eye screening can be seen. Also, eye screening and having an appointment with a specialized doctor to diagnose the disease condition can be very costly. Even if the patient consults a doctor, the doctor’s decision can be inconsistent. I.e there can be a variability or disagreement about the different stages of DR (eg. No disease, moderate, severe etc.) from different doctors. Because of these issues, about half of people suffer from vision loss even before they are diagnosed with the disease condition. Hence AES with very high accuracy is a much needed cost-effective solution to overcome this global situation.

Even Though several companies have done researches on Automatic Diabetic retinopathy detection, these companies have only focussed on identifying the severity of DR using retinal images, i.e. the different stages of disease progression from “no DR to proliferative DR”. What distinguishes Ophtha AES software from the others is that our system not only detects the severity of the disease but also detects pathological features of DR and marks their specific locations in the retinal image. For this, the system is trained with over +45000 retinal images at several stages. The following images show how the pathological features are identified by the system.