Ensemble deep learning and EfficientNet for accurate diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) stands as a significant global cause of vision impairment, underscoring the critical importance of early detection in mitigating its impact. Addressing this challenge head-on, this study introduces an innovative deep learning framework tailored for DR diagnosis. The proposed framework utilizes the EfficientNetB0 architecture to classify diabetic retinopathy severity levels from retinal images. By harnessing advanced techniques in computer vision and machine learning, the proposed model aims to deliver precise and dependable DR diagnoses. Continuous testing and experimentation shows to the efficiency of the architecture, showcasing promising outcomes that could help in the transformation of both diagnosing and treatment of DR. This framework takes help from the EfficientNet Machine Learning algorithms and employing advanced CNN layering techniques. The dataset utilized in this study is titled 'Diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy' and is sourced from Kaggle. It consists of 35,108 retinal images, classified into five categories: No Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), Mild DR, Moderate DR, Severe DR, and Proliferative DR. Through rigorous testing, the framework yields impressive results, boasting an average accuracy of 86.53% and a loss rate of 0.5663. A comparison with alternative approaches underscores the effectiveness of EfficientNet in handling classification tasks for diabetic retinopathy, particularly highlighting its high accuracy and generalizability across DR severity levels. These findings highlight the framework's potential to significantly advance the field of DR diagnosis, given more advanced datasets and more training resources which leads it to be offering clinicians a powerful tool for early intervention and improved patient outcomes.