A Novel Deep Learning Method for Red Lesions Detection Using

Hybrid Feature
Yao Yan1, Jun Gong1,2, Yangyang Liu 1
1. College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819
E-mail: 1165768426@qq.com
2. College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819
E-mail: gongjun@ise.neu.edu.cn

Abstract: Red lesions detection is the key to controlling disease progression in Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) early stages.
In this paper we propose a novel method for red lesions detection based on hybrid features, which consist of deep learned
features extracted via an improved LeNet architecture and hand-crafted features. A class balanced cross-entropy loss in
full connected layer of the modified LeNet network is used to reduce the interference from the unbalanced data types on
learning features. Blood vessels segmentation based on the U-net Convolutional Network is applied to deal with the
lesion candidates overlapping with vessels in the process of hand-crafted features extraction. Such ensemble vector of
descriptors is used afterwards to identify true lesion candidates using a Random Forest classifier. The approach was
evaluated based on the public dataset-DIARETDB1.
Key Words: Diabetic Retinopathy; Red Lesion; Deep Learning; Feature Fusion; Random Forest Classifier

AdaBoost) in [8], GMM and KNN classifiers respectively

1 INTRODUCTION
The prevalence of diabetes in adults aged 18–99 years was
estimated to be 8.4% in 2017 and predicted to rise to 9.9%
in 2045[1]. Almost one in three people with diabetes has
evidence of the eye disease called Diabetic Retinopathy
(DR). There is an increasingly urgent need to ensure
appropriate access to treatment for all people living with
diabetes to decrease the risk of vision loss [2]. However,
DR may only be recognized when the patient's condition
has deteriorated to a level where treatment is complicated
and nearly impossible [2]. Therefore, early detection
through regular screening plays an especially important
role in controlling disease progression [3].
To make such screenings’ cost down, using the state-of-the
art digital image processing technology to automate the
detection of abnormalities in retinal images is a primary
choice. Compared to other kinds of lesions in the DR, red
lesions (including microaneurysms (MAs) and intraretinal
hemorrhages (HEs)), as is shown in Fig.1, are the earliest
unequivocal symptom [3;4] and complicated to be detected.
Thus, this paper primarily focuses on the detection of red
lesions in fundus images.
The earliest paper related to the computer aided screening
of MA detection was published by Baudoin [5], tracing
back to 1983. Hereafter, Spencer et al. [6] have firstly
applied the bilinear top-hat transformation that belongs to
morphological operation for segmentation of MA candi-
dates, followed by pixel classification using KNN classifier
to extract lesion candidates.
The feature extraction followed by the use of classifier is
most a widely studied domain in the screening of red
lesions [7]. Compared the classification ability to red
lesions of different classifiers (GMM, KNN, SVM, and
This work is supported by National Nature Science Fund of Northeastern
University under No.61773104.
were the best classifiers for bright and red lesion
classification. The paper published by Kawadiwale et al. [9]
employs modified methodology to matched filtering for
detection of candidate lesions followed by Support Vector
Machine classifier (SVM). Novel filters were applied to
deal with false detections on blood vessels for interference
reduction to candidate detection by Srivastava [10]. The
methods proposed by Mohammad [11] applied the
Gaussian matched filter followed by bottom hat filtering
with gamma correction on preprocessed image to segment
blood vessel and MA, followed by threshold operation.
Fig.1 A fundus image with red lesions
In recent years, deep learning is a trend in medical image
processing. Chudzik et al. [12], L. Dai et al. [13], Orlando et
al. [14] have been proposed respective deep learning
methods in this domain and several other researchers are
ongoing. Chudzik et al. [12] applied a full convolution
neural network to detect MAs based on three standard
databases. The potential MA was via multi-sieving
convolutional neural network in [13]. The algorithm
applied image to text mapping to build an efficient MAs
detection framework. A Random Forest Classifier with
hybrid features was trained to classify the lesions candi-
dates in [14], where the depth features were learned by
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). However, labeling

978-1-7281-0106-4/19/$31.00 2019
c IEEE 2287
 images at a lesion level is costly, tedious and time
consuming. In consideration of the fact that the process of
training must use lesion level annotated data, the perfor-
mance of deep learning based method is always reduced.
Here, we proposed a novel deep learning detection method
for red lesions to deal with the problem. In particular, we
aim to learn a series of representative features using an
improved LeNet architecture, which is complementary to
the manually engineered by experimentations. Such
ensemble vector of descriptors is used afterwards to iden-
tify true lesion candidates using a Random Forest classifier.
The rest of this paper is organized as follow. The section 2
more narrowly illustrates the proposed method for red
lesions detection. In the section 3, the comprehensive
experimental results are described. Finally, the section 4
summarizes the research.
2 PROPOSED METHOD
In this section, we mainly state the proposed method for the
detection of red lesions.
2.1 Preprocessing
Visualization analysis of RGB retinal images is performed.
The green channel presents the best contrast between
fundus details (red lesions, optic disc, macular, and fundus
blood vessels and so on) and background and lowest noise
in contrast to the other two channels [11;14]. Therefore, the
green channel ‫ܫ‬௚௥௘௘௡ taken from original color image ‫ ܫ‬is
adopted for processing.
In order to eliminate the influence of non-retinal region on
sub-sequent processing, threshold segmentation is applied
to extract the region of interest (ROI, Fig.2 (a)):
ܾ݈ܽܿ݇ǡܲ ൏ ‫݈݀݋݄ݏ݁ݎ݄ݐ‬
݉ܽ‫ ݇ݏ‬ൌ ൜ (1)
‫݁ݐ݄݅ݓ‬ǡܲ ൒ ‫݈݀݋݄ݏ݁ݎ݄ݐ‬
Where  is the intensity of each pixel in the image ‫ܫ‬௚௥௘௘௡ .
Then, iterative dilation is used to expand the area of ROI
(Fig.2 (b)) to avoid the impact of the camera aperture on
image filter transformation in retinal images [15].
Some potential lesions possibly hide in the darkest areas
due to uneven illumination. So, contrast limited adaptive
histogram equalization (CLAHE) [16] model is adopted to
make the hidden lesions more visible greatly, an example
vividly is shown in Fig.2 (c).
2.2 Candidate detection
In consideration of semi-supervised or supervised learning
methods aggravating the tag burden to a certain extent, an
unsupervised morphological method is applied on candi-
date detection.
Given a preprocessed image ‫ ܫ‬, a Gaussian filter with
parameters ߪ ൌ ͷ is used to reduce the noise, generating a
new image ‫ܫ‬Ԣ. Introducing linear structuring elements of
length ݈ ‫ ܮ א‬to the traditional Bot-hat transformation which
is aimed at highlighting the dark object from the bright
background, image ‫ܫ‬௕௢௧ି௛௔௧ is computed by the formula:
‫ܫ‬௕௢௧ି௛௔௧ ൌ ሺ‫ ܫ‬ᇱ Ȉ ݈ሻ െ ‫ ܫ‬ᇱ
‫ܫ‬Ԣ Ȉ ܾ ൌ ሺ‫ܫ‬Ԣ۩݈ሻ߆݈ (3)
2288 The 31th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (2019 CCDC)
(a) (b)
(d)
(c)
Fig.2 From left to right: (a) ROI extracting from ‫ܫ‬௚௥௘௘௡ ; (b) ROI
after iterative dilation;(c) CLAHE result of the (b);(d) the histo-
gram of (c).
Where ۩ and ߆ is respectively the mathematical symbol of
morphological dilation and closing. The set of relevant
scales  is a fixed parameter that is in order to automati-
cally adapt to different lesion sizes, as explained in Section
ሺ௟ሻ
3.2. ‫ܫ‬௠௜௡ is the result of the remaining lesions with sizes
longer than ݈ by taking the minimum response. Thus, the
remaining structures map is obtained by:
ሺ௟ሻ ሺ௟ሻ
‫ܫ‬௖௔௡ௗ ൌ ‫ܫ‬௠௜௡ െ ‫ ܫ‬ᇱ
ൌ ݉݅݊ሺ‫ ܫ‬Ȉ ‫ܮ‬ሻ െ ‫ ܫ‬ᇱ (4)
Next, a thresholding operation is applied on
ሺ௟ሻ
‫ܫ‬௖௔௡ௗ .
The
threshold setting is closely related to the number of
candi-date regions we expect. To set the appropriate
threshold ‫ݐ‬௞ , the maximum number a fundus image has of
red lesions is assumed to be ‫ܭ‬. On condition that the num-
ber of connected domains is less than or equal to ‫ܭ‬, the
pixels whose intensity is less than the threshold ‫ݐ‬௦ is set to
zero. To deal with the conditions when there is no lesion or
when is impossible to detect less than ‫ ܭ‬candidates, an
upper bound ‫ݐ‬௨ and a lower bound ‫ݐ‬௟ is set such that:
ሺ௟ሻ
‫ݐ‬௟ ‫ݐ׊‬௦ ǣ ‫ܥܥ‬൫‫ܫ‬௖௔௡ௗ ൐ ‫ݐ‬௦ ൯ ൏ ‫ܭ‬
ሺ௟ሻ
‫ݐ‬௞ ൌ ൞ ‫ݐ‬௦ ‫ܥܥ‬൫‫ܫ‬௖௔௡ௗ ൐ ‫ݐ‬௦ ൯ ൑ ‫ܭ‬ (5)
ሺ௟ሻ
‫ݐ‬௨ ‫ݐ׊‬௦ ǣ ‫ܥܥ‬൫‫ܫ‬௖௔௡ௗ
൐ ‫ݐ‬௦ ൯ ൐ ‫ܭ‬
Where ‫ ܥܥ‬is a function that computes the number of the
connected domains. Once ‫ݐ‬௞ is fixed, a binary map of
ሺ௟ሻ
candidates is obtained by thresholding ‫ܹܤ‬௟ ൌ ‫ܫ‬௖௔௡ௗ ൐ ‫ݐ‬௞
[14]. A candidate binary image can be obtained for each ݈,
and the final binary images of all candidate regions at
different scales can be calculated by:
‫ ܹܤ‬ൌ ‫ڂ‬௟‫א‬௅ ‫ܹܤ‬௟ (6)
Fig.3 (a) to (b) respectively shows the binary map of
candidates ‫ܹܤ‬௟ at different scales. Due to some small
candidate regions not associated with any pathological area
(2) but with noise in ‫ܹܤ‬, connection structures smaller than
’š pixels are abandoned, as is shown in Fig.3 (d).
 Table 1 Modified network structure parameters

Type Description Output size

Input image size 32×32×3 32×32×3
convolution kernel 5×5,
CONV 32×32×32
padding = ‘SAME’
ReLU 32×32×32
(a) (b)
maxpool, window size 3×3,
Pooling 16×16×32
stride = 2

convolution kernel 5×5,

CONV 16×16×32
padding = ‘SAME’
ReLU 16×16×32
maxpool, window size 3×3,
Pooling 8×8×32
(c) (d) stride = 2

Fig.3 From left to right: (a) the binary map of candidates ‫ܹܤ‬௟ at convolution kernel 5×5,
CONV 8×8×64
݈ ൌ ͻ; (b) the binary map of candidates ‫ܹܤ‬௟ at ݈ ൌ ͵Ͳ; (c) the padding = ‘SAME’
final binary image ‫ ܹܤ‬fused by all ‫ܹܤ‬௟ ;(d) result of candidate ReLU 8×8×64
extraction.
maxpool, window size 3×3,
2.3 Feature extraction Pooling 4×4×64
stride = 2
This paper improved the LeNet network architecture to convolution kernel 4×4,
capture candidate’s feature, according to the principle that CONV 1×1×128
padding = ‘VALID’
the output number increases of the feature map with the
FC ‫ݏݏ݋ܮ‬ఉ 2
decline of its resolution. Table 1 shows modified network
structure parameters. eliminate effects on the shape based features extraction due
A training set ܵ ൌ ሼܺ௜ ǡ ‫ݕ‬௜ ሽ , ݅ ൌ ͳǡʹǡ ‫ ݊ ڮ‬is dynamically to some red lesion overlapped with it, as is shown in Fig.4.
constructed, where each sample ܺ௜ is a red-lesion-centric The area of overlapping region is computed as the Vascular
patch with ͵ʹ ൈ ͵ʹ pixels in size and the label ‫ݕ‬௜ ߳ሼെͳǡͳሽ features which is taken into consideration in the classifica-
represents a true or false red lesion. However, false samples tion. Besides, Area, circumference, compactness, and
approximately outnumber the true by three to one. As a eccentricity and so on, because of red lesions’ specific
result, the classification model tends to predict most catego- shape similar to the circular, are extracted, as is shown in
ries and ignores few categories, which will ultimately affect table 2.
the performance of classifiers. To avoid this, a class bal- Interaction with mathematical features helps us to build an
anced cross-entropy loss [17] is given by: optimal feature set. In this paper, we extracted the pixel
‫ݏݏ݋ܮ‬ఉ ൌ െߚ σ௜‫א‬௒శ ݈‫ܲ ݃݋‬ሺ‫ݕ‬௜ ȁܺ௜ Ǣ ܹሻ െ based features in different color channels, including the
ሺͳ െ ߚሻ σ௜‫א‬௒ష ݈‫ܲ ݃݋‬ሺ‫ݕ‬௜ ȁܺ௜ Ǣ ܹሻ (7) original color channels, enhancement channels, and the
other channels containing lesion information. The two
where ߚ ൌ ȁܻି ȁȀሺȁܻା ȁ ൅ ȁܻି ȁሻ is the proportion of false categories of features are described in detail in table 2.
samples ܻି vs. all samples, ܹ is the weight and ܲ is the
probability obtained in ReLU layer.
In the process of convolutional neural network training, the
learning rate ߟ determines the influence degree of weight
updated by each step to the current weight. To realize
dynamic adjustment based on loss rate, ߟ is given by:
ߟ ൌ ߟ ή ߛ ᇞ௅௢௦௦ழఎ̴௧௛௥௘௦௛௛௢௟ௗ (8)
Where ᇞ ‫ ݏݏ݋ܮ‬is the change rate of loss function, and ˄a˅ ˄b˅
Ʉ̴–h”‡•hh‘Ž† is a fixed threshold value. On the condition
that ᇞ ‫ ݏݏ݋ܮ‬is less than ߟ̴‫ ݈݀݋݄݄ݏ݁ݎ݄ݐ‬, current learning Fig.4 From left to right: (a) result of candidate extraction; (b) the
result of segmentation based on U-net, the green area is the red
rate will narrow ߛ (attenuation coefficient) times.
lesions candidate.
The study of Babenko et al. [18] verified that the highest
accuracy was achieved when the fully connected layer 2.4 Candidate classification with random forest based
output 128-dimensional vector of deep learned features. on hybrid features
Therefore, this paper takes the 128-dimensional feature as A Random Forest (RF) is a Bagging ensemble classifier
the finally extracted depth feature. based on decision trees with random feature selection. The
As a complement of depth features, shape and pixel based classifier comes with two advantages: 1) It is robust against
features which are hand-crafted of red lesions is captured. A noise and overfitting when training high-dimensional data;
U-net network is applied to segment retinal blood vessels to 2) it is especially suitable for the cases where the sample

The 31th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (2019 CCDC) 2289
 Table 2 Summary of the hand-crafted features

Shape based features calculation formula

࡭࢘ࢋࢇ of each red lesion candidate
ࡼࢋ࢘࢏࢓ࢋ࢚ࢋ࢘ is the boundary of each candidate
࡯࢏࢘ࢉ࢛࢒ࢇ࢘࢏࢚࢟
ࡸ is the major axis length of each red lesion
ࢃ is the minor axis length of each red lesion
࡭࢙࢖ࢋࢉ࢚ࡾࢇ࢚࢏࢕
࡯࢕࢓࢖ࢇࢉ࢚࢔ࢋ࢙࢙
ࡱࢉࢉࢋ࢔࢚࢘࢏ࢉ࢏࢚࢟ of each red lesion
ࢂࢋ࢙࢙ࢋ࢒ࡾࢇ࢚࢏࢕ is the ratio of the lesion candidate
areas coincide with the blood vessels
Pixel based features
ࡹࢋࢇ࢔ intensity of the candidate
ࡿ࢛࢓ intensity of the candidate
ࡿ࢚ࢊ is standard deviation of the candidate
࡯࢕࢔࢙࢚࢘ࢇ࢙࢚
ࡺࡿ is the sum of normalized intensity
ࡺࡹ is the mean of normalized intensity
ࡹ࢏࢔intensity value of the candidate
‫ ܣ‬ൌ σ௞ఢ ͳ, where is the set of pixels of candidate
ܲ ൌ σ௞ఢ୆ ͳ, where ‫ ܤ‬is the set of pixels of candidate’s boundary
‫ ݕݐ݅ݎ݈ܽݑܿݎ݅ܥ‬ൌ Ͷߨ ή ‫ܽ݁ݎܣ‬Ȁܲ݁‫ ݎ݁ݐ݁݉݅ݎ‬ଶ
‫ ݋݅ݐܴܽݐܿ݁݌ݏܣ‬ൌ ‫ܮ‬Ȁܹ
‫ ݏݏ݁݊ݐܿܽ݌݉݋ܥ‬ൌ ට൫σ௡௜ୀଵ ݀௜ െ ݀ሚ ൯Τ݊ , where ݀௜ is the distance between the ݅‫ݐ‬
pixel on the boundary to the center, and ݀ሚ is the average of all the distances
‫ ݕݐ݅ܿ݅ݎݐ݊݁ܿܿܧ‬ൌ …Ȁƒ
ܸ݁‫ ݋݅ݐܴ݈ܽ݁ݏݏ‬ൌ ݊‫݉ݑ‬ሺܲ݅‫݈݁ݏݏܸ݁ݔ݅ܲځ݀݊ܽܥݔ‬ሻȀ݊‫݉ݑ‬ሺܲ݅‫݀݊ܽܥݔ‬ሻ
calculation formula (take the color channel after CLAHE as an example)
‫݊ܽ݁ܯ‬ሺ‫ܥ‬ሻ ൌ σ௜‫א‬௖௔௡ௗ ‫ܥ‬ሺ݅ሻ Ȁ‫ݏ‬, ‫ ݏ‬ൌ σ௜‫א‬௖௔௡ௗ ͳ is the area of the candidate
ܵ‫݉ݑ‬ሺ‫ܥ‬ሻ ൌ σ௜‫א‬௖௔௡ௗ ‫ܥ‬ሺ݅ሻ
ܵ‫݀ݐ‬ሺ‫ܥ‬ሻ ൌ ඥσ௜‫א‬௖௔௡ௗሺ‫ܥ‬ሺ݅ሻ െ ‫݊ܽ݁ܯ‬ሺ‫ܥ‬ሻሻଶ Ȁ‫ݏ‬
‫ݐݏܽݎݐݏ݊݋ܥ‬ሺ‫ܥ‬ሻ ൌ σ௜‫א‬௖௔௡ௗ ‫ܥ‬ሺ݅ሻ Ȁ‫ ݏ‬െ σ௜‫א‬ௗ௜௟௔௧௘௖௔௡ௗ ‫ܥ‬ሺ݅ሻ Ȁ‫ ݏ‬, ݈݀݅ܽ‫ ݀݊ܽܿ݁ݐ‬is the
candidate region after dilation
ܰܵሺ‫ܥ‬ሻ ൌ ൫ܵ‫݉ݑ‬ሺܿሻ െ ‫݊ܽ݁ܯ‬ሺ‫ܫ‬௕௚ ሻ൯Ȁܵ‫݀ݐ‬ሺ‫ܫ‬௕௚ ሻ
ܰ‫ܯ‬ሺ‫ܥ‬ሻ ൌ ൫‫݊ܽ݁ܯ‬ሺܿሻ െ ‫݊ܽ݁ܯ‬ሺ‫ܫ‬௕௚ ሻ൯Ȁܵ‫݀ݐ‬ሺ‫ܫ‬௕௚ ሻ

data is small but the characteristic dimension is high. The
wrong cognition should be noted: the more features entered
into the classifier, the better result classifier gets [19]. The
݉-dimentional feature that is randomly selected from a
sample’s feature vector ‫ ܯ‬is the only parameter determin-
ing the classification capability of a RF and can be chosen
according to Out-of-Bag error (OOB error). In this paper,
݉ ൌ ͵ͲͲ or ݉ ൌ ͵ͶͲ was respectively selected when
constructing a RF with hand-crafted features and a RF with
fused features.
3 EXPERIMENT
3.1 Dataset and Model selection
In this section, we conduct extensive experiments to
vali-date and evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed red
les-ion detection method on public retinal image database-
DIARETDB1 [8;10;14]. DIARETDB1 contains 89 color
fundus images collected under various imagery environ-
ments [14]. 84 images consist of signs of mild or
pre-proliferative DR, and the remaining 5 are normal. 28
images were used for training and 61 images for testing.
The accuracy of detecting red lesion candidate is critical to
subsequent classification. Whereas candidate detection
chiefly depends on three parameters settings:1)‫ܮ‬, which is
the set of different scale linear structures;2) ‫ܭ‬, which is the
number of connected domains expectedly reserved;3) ‫ݔ݌‬,
which is the minimum area of retained lesions in pixels. A
crossover experimental design was carried out to complete
the parameters-optimized process. The sets of values are
‫ ܮ‬ൌ ሼ͵ǡ͸ǡͻǡ ‫ ڮ‬ǡ͸Ͳሽ , ‫ ܭ‬ൌ ሼ͸ͲǡͺͲǡ ‫ͲͲʹ ڮ‬ሽ and ‫ ݔ݌‬ൌ
ሼ͵ǡͶǡͷǡ͸ǡ͹ǡͺǡͻǡͳͲሽ . The maximum scale from ‫ ܮ‬was
adapted on the remaining data sets, which allows to recover
a set of candidates with a size proportional to the resolution
of each image [14].
3.2 Evaluation criterion
There are two evaluation indexes for the detection perfor-
mance of DR lesion features: based on lesion and based on
image. The former is focused on the judging whether a
candidate region is DR lesion and whether the algorithm
can detect the number of DR lesions, which the latter pays
no attention to. Therefore, evaluation index based on lesion
was what this paper focuses on.
The result of red lesion candidate detection is of vital im-
portance to subsequent steps. In order to check this method
for extracting the candidate regions, Free-response ROC
(FROC) curves was adopted to evaluate the performance of
the task. The abscissa and ordinate of these plots are respec-
tively the average number of false positive detections per
image (FPI) and per lesion sensitivity [20]. Thus, the FROC
curves are intuitively capable of indicating the performance
that the method proposed distinguishes the true and false
lesion. Meanwhile, the sensitivity (ܵ݁ ൌ ܶܲȀሺ‫ ܰܨ‬൅ ܶܰሻ)
represents the accuracy of detecting lesion features by the
algorithm. The larger the value is, the better the detection
method. In addition, the competition metric as proposed in
the retinopathy online challenge [21] was also computed.
3.3 Red lesion detection results and analysis
By experiments, there would be no significant increase in
Per lesion sensitivity when ‫ ܮ‬reached a certain limit 30.
When ‫ ܭ‬was greater than 160ˈPer lesion sensitivity only
increased by 0.84%. ‫ ݔ݌‬is set at 4 in order to ensure the

2290 The 31th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (2019 CCDC)
maximum utilization rate of Per lesion sensitivity. To sum
up, the parameters of the candidate region algorithm pro-
posed in this paper were ‫ ܮ‬ൌ ሼ͵ǡ͸ǡͻǡ ‫ ڮ‬ǡ͵Ͳሽ, ‫ ܭ‬ൌ ͳ͸Ͳ and
‫ ݔ݌‬ൌ Ͷ.
The three experimental group experiments were conducted
for per lesion evaluation of classification, as detailed in
Table 3. Results obtained by Seoud et al. [22] were pro-
vided. Experiment 3 evaluated the ability of the model to
process MAs and HEs simultaneously on multiple scales
according to the same protocol as [22]. Hypothesis tests
show a statistically significant improvement in the per
lesion sensitivity values when using the combined approach
compared to using each representation separately
probabilities and the hand-crafted features, respectively.
FROC curves are used to comparison, as is shown in Fig.5,
and Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed to estimate
the statistical significance of the differences in the per
lesion sensitivity values [14;22]. Compared with the
recognition effect of RE with deep learned features or
hand-crafted feature, the method with hybrid feature pro-
posed in this paper has performed better. Compared with
the hand-crafted feature, CPM of proposed method has
been improved by 3.1%, and the sensitivity (FPI=1) has
been improved by 2.7%. Compared with deep feature
method, CPM is improved by 8.9%, and the sensitivity
(FPI=1) is improved by 11.8%.
Table 3 Results of RF classifier for various feature descriptors
Sensitivity
Exp.ID Method CPM
(FPI=1)
Author
literature [22] 35.40% 34.62%
proposed
1 Deep learned features 39.33% 36.84%
2 Hand-crafted features 45.09% 45.93%
3 Hybrid feature 48.23% 48.71%
Fig.5 Experiment 3. FROC
4 CONCLUSION
This paper emphasizes on the problem of looking for an
appropriate way to detect red lesions from complex
back-ground in fundus images. One of the main contribu-
tions of this thesis is that we have proposed an unsupervised
morphological method for candidate extraction. To over-
come the drawbacks of merely detecting mono-size MAs in
traditional methods and improve the extraction ability,
The 31th Chinese Control and Decision Conference (2019 CCDC)
candidate threshold segmentation based on multi-scale
Bot-hat transformation and statistics of connected domain
is put forward. Taking expensive cost of manual annotation
at a lesion level in fundus images into account, the im-
proved LeNet convolutional neural network as section 2
mentioned is a robust choice to solve an imbalance of data
types and to enhance performance of other deep learning
based approaches. Deep features extracted by convolutional
neural network are highly complemented fusing with
hand-craft features to further strengthen the description
ability of lesion features. Experiments on DIARETDB1
data set empirically reflected that inosculating the two
sources of feature provides significantly superior in the
classification compared to any homo-source feature.
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