Drusen diagnosis comparison between hyper-spectral and color retinal images.

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a degenerative aging disorder, which can lead to irreversible vision loss in older individuals. The emergence of clinical applications of retinal hyper-spectral imaging provides a unique opportunity to capture important spectral signatures, with the potential to enhance the molecular diagnosis of retinal diseases. In this study, we use a machine learning classification approach to explore whether hyper-spectral images offer an improved outcome compared to standard RGB images. Our results show that the classifier performs better on hyper-spectral images with improved accuracy and sensitivity for drusen classification compared to standard imaging. By examining the most important features in the classification task, our data suggest that drusen are highly heterogeneous. Our work provides further evidence that hyper-spectral retinal image data are uniquely suited for computer-aided diagnosis and detection techniques.