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Online challenge driving innovation in eye disease detection

Researchers at the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences led an international competition aimed at helping patients with diabetes through improving computer detection of diabetic retinopathy. Diabetic retinopathy is the largest cause of blindness in the U.S. and Europe, and most visual loss and blindness from diabetic retinopathy is preventable through early diagnosis or screening.

The Retinopathy Online Challenge (ROC), an online competition, pitted teams of scientists against each other in the development of the best automated methods used in the detection of microaneurysms in retinal images. Twenty-three groups of researchers worldwide participated, including groups from Japan, India, Singapore, Australia, Spain and France.

Gwénolé Quellec, PhD, with the ROC top prize, an engraved Anamosa Limestone

The manuscript with the methods and results of the competition was just published in the scientific journal IEEE Transactions for Medical Imaging. This year’s winner, Gwénolé Quellec, PhD, is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Iowa, and was recognized at last years SPIE: Medical Imaging 2009 conference in Orlando, FL.

Additional ROC competitions are expected to be held in the future. More information at: http://roc.healthcare.uiowa.edu

Fig. 1. Digital color fundus photograph containing microaneurysms. This image is one of the images from the test set of the ROC microaneurysm detection competition. To the right an enlarged part of the green plane of the image is shown with microaneurysms indicated.