Improving Accuracy of Grading and Referral of Diabetic Macular Edema Using Location and Extent of Hard Exudates in Retinal Photography

摘要

Background:Hard exudates (HE) are used as a surrogate marker for sight-threatening diabetic macular edema (DME) in most telemedicine-based screening programs in the world. This study investigates whether proximity of HE to the center of the macula, and extent of HE are associated with greater clinically significant macular edema (CSME) severity. A novel method for associating optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans with CSME was developed.