An Efficient Approach to Predict Eye Diseases from Symptoms Using Machine Learning and Ranker-Based Feature Selection Methods.

The eye is generally considered to be the most important sensory organ of humans. Diseases and other degenerative conditions of the eye are therefore of great concern as they affect the function of this vital organ. With proper early diagnosis by experts and with optimal use of medicines and surgical techniques, these diseases or conditions can in many cases be either cured or greatly mitigated. Experts that perform the diagnosis are in high demand and their services are expensive, hence the appropriate identification of the cause of vision problems is either postponed or not done at all such that corrective measures are either not done or done too late. An efficient model to predict eye diseases using machine learning (ML) and ranker-based feature selection (r-FS) methods is therefore proposed which will aid in obtaining a correct diagnosis. The aim of this model is to automatically predict one or more of five common eye diseases namely, Cataracts (CT), Acute Angle-Closure Glaucoma (AACG), Primary Congenital Glaucoma (PCG), Exophthalmos or Bulging Eyes (BE) and Ocular Hypertension (OH). We have used efficient data collection methods, data annotations by professional ophthalmologists, applied five different feature selection methods, two types of data splitting techniques (train-test and stratified k-fold cross validation), and applied nine ML methods for the overall prediction approach. While applying ML methods, we have chosen suitable classic ML methods, such as Decision Tree (DT), Random Forest (RF), Naive Bayes (NB), AdaBoost (AB), Logistic Regression (LR), k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN), Bagging (Bg), Boosting (BS) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). We have performed a symptomatic analysis of the prominent symptoms of each of the five eye diseases. The results of the analysis and comparison between methods are shown separately. While comparing the methods, we have adopted traditional performance indices, such as accuracy, precision, sensitivity, F1-Score, etc. Finally, SVM outperformed other models obtaining the highest accuracy of 99.11% for 10-fold cross-validation and LR obtained 98.58% for the split ratio of 80:20.

Clinical Profile of Patients with Scleritis in Bangladesh.

Purpose: To analyze clinical profile of the patients with scleritis in a tertiary care eye hospital in Bangladesh.Method: Retrospective analysis of 111 eyes of 79 patients of scleritis between January 2012 and May 2018.Result: The study observed a relative younger mean age and equal gender distribution. Diffuse anterior scleritis (43%) was the most common type of scleritis. Rheumatoid arthritis (10%) was the most common systemic disease followed by granulomatosis with polyangiitis (5%) and tuberculosis (2.5%). Fifty-eight patients (73.4%) required immunosuppressive agents.Conclusion: The current study highlighted a distinct pattern and profile of scleritis patients in Bangladesh.