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Mask-UnMask Regions (MUMR) Framework for Classifying AMD Grades Using Inter-Regional Interaction Analysis

delete2025-01-01
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OA
AI
I
Ibrahim Abdelhalim
N
Namuunaa Nadmid
M
Mohamed Elsharkawy
M
Mohammed Ghazal
A
Ali Mahmoud
A
Ayman El‐Baz *
DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3526948delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Early diagnosis and effective treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of vision impairment, are critically dependent on accurate grading. This paper presents a novel framework, named Mask-UnMask Regions (MUMR), designed to differentiate between normal retina, intermediate AMD, geographic atrophy (GA), and wet AMD using standardized retinal fundus images with an input resolution of $1024 \times 1024$ pixels. The framework initiates with the downscaling of images to a quarter of their original size via a Preserving High-Frequency Information (PHFI) module, which retains key details essential for further analysis. Additionally, we developed a simple, lightweight, yet efficient ResNet-like network for feature extraction and introduced a Region Interaction (RI) module. This module incorporates Adaptive Mask and UnMask Sub-Modules, identifying significant regions while reconstructing less relevant areas using a direction-constrained self-attention mechanism to ensure the learning of global structural cues critical for AMD grade classification. The proposed method was evaluated on a dataset comprising 864 retinal fundus images. Our model consistently outperforms state-of-the-art approaches, achieving mean accuracy, mean F1-score, and mean Cohen's Kappa of 92.55%, 92.59%, and 89.97%, respectively. In the binary classification task of distinguishing between Non-AMD and AMD cases, the proposed approach also surpasses competing models, achieving mean accuracy, mean F1-score, and mean Cohen's Kappa of 97.11%, 97.03%, and 94.06%, respectively. Furthermore, statistical analysis of these metrics confirms that the improvements are statistically significant, demonstrating the robustness and improved performance of our proposed framework in AMD grading.
Keywords:
Accuracy
Retina
Diseases
Computational modeling
Sensitivity
Transformers
Deep learning
Biological system modeling
Transfer learning
Training
Age-related macular degeneration
retinal diseases
deep learning
transformer

Journal

IEEE Access cover
IEEE Access
IF:
3.6
Papers:
9.8W
Citations:
29.4W

Organization

A
Abu Dhabi University
Scholars:
1.2K
Papers: 1.3K
Citations: 1.7K
U
University of Louisville
Scholars:
1.3W
Papers: 1.0W
Citations: 1.3W