Diabetes detection from non-diabetic retinopathy fundus images using deep learning methodology

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States and worldwide. Traditionally, diabetes detection from retinal images has been performed only using relevant retinopathy indications. This research aimed to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning model which can detect the presence of diabetes from fundus imagery of eyes without any diabetic eye disease. A machine learning algorithm was trained on the EyePACS dataset, consisting of 47,076 images. Patients were also divided into cohorts based on disease duration, each cohort consisting of patients diagnosed within the timeframe in question (e.g., 15 years) and healthy participants. The algorithm achieved 0.86 area under receiver operating curve (AUC) in detecting diabetes per patient visit when averaged across camera models, and AUC 0.83 on the task of detecting diabetes per image. The results suggest that diabetes may be diagnosed non-invasively using fundus imagery alone. This may enable diabetes diagnosis at point of care, as well as other, accessible venues, facilitating the diagnosis of many undiagnosed people with diabetes.