RP squeeze U-SegNet model for lesion segmentation and optimization enabled ShuffleNet based multi-level severity diabetic retinopathy classification

In Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), the retina is harmed due to the high blood pressure in small blood vessels. Manual screening is time-consuming, which can be overcome by using automated techniques. Hence, this paper proposed a new method for classifying the multi-level severity of DR. Initially, the input fundus image is pre-processed by Non-local means Denoising (NLMD). Then, lesion segmentation is carried out by the Recurrent Prototypical-squeeze U-SegNet (RP-squeeze U-SegNet). Next, feature extraction is effectuated to mine image-level features. DR is categorized as abnormal or normal by ShuffleNet and it is tuned by Fractional War Royale Optimization (FrWRO), and later, if DR is detected, severity classification is performed. Furthermore, the FrWRO-SqueezeNet obtained the maximum performance with sensitivity of 97%, accuracy of 93.8%, specificity of 95.1%, precision of 91.8%, and F-Measure of 94.3%. The devised scheme accurately visualizes abnormal regions in the fundus images. Also, it has the ability to identify the severity levels of DR effectively, which avoids the progression risk to vision loss and proliferative disease.