An Efficient Deep Learning Approach to Detect Neurodegenerative Diseases Using Retinal Images

Neurodegenerative disorders like Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease typically get diagnosed through brain MRI, CT scans, genetic testing, and various laboratory screening tests that are often tedious, time-consuming, and beyond the reach of the financial capability of many people especially, those living in the developing world. Moreover, they often pose potential hazards for patients with certain pre-existing conditions. To remedy this, we propose an efficient deep-learning approach that enables the detection of such neurodegenerative diseases through retinal images rather than brain images. Our proposed system can proactively detect such disorders simply through retinal scans, which are fast and cost-effective compared to traditional diagnostic approaches, which require expensive and sophisticated equipment. We used a dataset containing retinal cross-sectional images…