Multiclass Eye Disease Classification Using Transfer Learning Approach

Alvin Ming, Siang Choo and Stephanie, Chua and Lik Thai, Lim and Dayang Nurfatimah, Awang Iskandar and Mohd Hanafi, Ahmad Hijazi and Puteri Nor Ellyza, Nohuddin (2025) Multiclass Eye Disease Classification Using Transfer Learning Approach. International Journal of Computer Theory and Engineering, 17 (4). pp. 170-178. ISSN 2972-4511

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Abstract

Ophthalmologists commonly use retinal fundus images for diagnosis. Recently, automation of this process using deep learning has gained significant attention. Multiclass classification, which distinguishes among multiple eye diseases, is more representative of actual clinical settings, however, it presents challenges such as limited availability of annotated datasets, class imbalance, overlapping clinical features across various eye diseases and disease heterogeneity. This study develops deep learning models for multiclass classification of three major eye diseases—cataracts, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma—alongside normal cases. A larger and more diverse dataset was obtained by combining multiple publicly available, well-annotated datasets. Four deep learning models: VGG16, Inception-v3, ResNet50 and EfficientNet-B0, were deployed using a transfer learning approach. These models achieved test accuracies ranging from 74.29% to 78.79%, with ResNet50 performing the best, achieving an accuracy of 78.79%, precision of 80.04%, recall of 78.79%, and an F1-score of 78.76%. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of transfer learning for multiclass classification of eye diseases. Notably, the models were trained and evaluated on a heterogeneous dataset that simulates real-world variability in image acquisition, highlighting their generalization capabilities and robustness to inconsistency. The study provides valuable insights about the performance of pre-trained deep learning models under realistic conditions, supporting their potential as assistive diagnostic tools in actual clinical scenarios.

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