Customized Convolutional Neural Network for Glaucoma Detection in Retinal Fundus Images

Glaucoma is one of the leading causes of permanent blindness and remains a current challenge in the field of ophthalmology. This research aims to present a comprehensive investigation into the development and evaluation of new technology for glaucoma detection in retinal fundus images. The development and evaluation are presented on a customized architecture, using the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) method. The proposed CNN architecture is designed to address the complex characteristics of glaucoma changes in the identification process. The research dataset consists of 506 retinal images categorized into 117 glaucoma images, 19 suspected glaucoma images, and 370 healthy images. Through our in-depth exploration, we conducted a careful analysis to uncover patterns and fundamental trends related to glaucoma-related features. During the training phase, the proposed CNN achieved outstanding average accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity values of 92.88%, 94.66%, and 89.31%, respectively. In the unseen test dataset, the model demonstrated competitive performance with an accuracy of 80.87%, sensitivity of 85.65%, and specificity of 71.26%. These findings emphasize the potential of the model as a reliable tool for glaucoma detection. The results indicate that the proposed method utilizing a customized CNN architecture is designed for glaucoma detection in retinal fundus images. The presented output results also hold promise for clinical relevance and can be considered an improvement in the care of retinal fundus patients.