Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) can sometimes be treated and prevented from causing irreversible vision loss if caught and treated properly. In this work, a deep learning (DL) model is employed to accurately identify all five stages of DR. METHODS: The suggested methodology presents two examples, one with and one without picture augmentation. A balanced dataset meeting the same criteria in both cases is then generated using augmentative methods. The DenseNet-121-rendered model on the Asia Pacific Tele-Ophthalmology Society (APTOS) and dataset for diabetic retinopathy (DDR) datasets performed exceptionally well when compared to other methods for identifying the five stages of DR. RESULTS: Our propose model achieved the highest test accuracy of 98.36%, top-2 accuracy of 100%, and top-3 accuracy of 100% for the APTOS dataset, and the highest test accuracy of 79.67%, top-2 accuracy of 92.%76, and top-3 accuracy of 98.94% for the DDR dataset. Additional criteria (precision, recall, and F1-score) for gauging the efficacy of the proposed model were established with the help of APTOS and DDR. CONCLUSIONS: It was discovered that feeding a model with higher-quality photographs increased its efficiency and ability for learning, as opposed to both state-of-the-art technology and the other, non-enhanced model.