Retinopathy of prematurity

We review what is known in each country of the Latin American region in regard to blindness and visual impairment and make some comparisons to Hispanic populations in the United States. Prevalence of blindness varied from 1.1% in Argentina to 4.1% in Guatemala in people 50 years of age and older, with the major cause being cataract. Diabetic retinopathy and

Eye exam can be as efficacious as physical one in determining health concerns. Retina screening can be the very rest clue for detecting a variety of hidden health issues including pre-diabetes and diabetes. Through the process of clinical diagnosis and prognosis; ophthalmologists rely heavily on the binary segmented version of retina fundus image; where the accuracy of segmented vessels, optic disc, and abnormal lesions extremely affects the diagnosis accuracy which in turn affect the subsequent clinical treatment steps. This paper proposes an automated retinal fundus image segmentation system composed of three segmentation subsystems follow same core segmentation algorithm. Despite of broad difference in features and characteristics; retinal vessels, optic disc, and exudate lesions are extracted by each subsystem without the need for texture analysis or synthesis. For sake of compact diagnosis and complete clinical insight, our proposed system can detect these anatomical structures in one session with high accuracy even in pathological retina images. The proposed system uses a robust hybrid segmentation algorithm combines adaptive fuzzy thresholding and mathematical morphology. The proposed system is validated using four benchmark datasets: DRIVE and STARE (vessels), DRISHTI-GS (optic disc), and DIARETDB1 (exudates lesions). Competitive segmentation performance is achieved, outperforming a variety of up-to-date systems and demonstrating the capacity to deal systems and demonstrating the capacity to deal with other heterogeneous aatomical structures.

Diabetes mellitus occurrence has been associated to the modification of the physiological levels of glucose and is often accompanied by several long-term complications, namely neuropathy, nephropathy, retinopathy, cataract, and cardiovascular. Aldose reductase (AR) is an enzyme of aldoketo reductase super-family that catalyzes the conversion of glucose to sorbitol in the polyol pathway of glucose metabolism. In this context, aldose reductase inhibitors (ARIs) have received much attention worldwide. Decreased sorbitol flux through polyol pathway by ARIs could be an emerging target for the management of major complications of diabetes. The present review article describes a brief overview of the role of aldose reductase in the diabetic complications, advances achieved on ARIs and their potential use in the treatment and management of the major diabetic complications such as cataract, retinopathy, neuropathy, nephropathy and cardiovascular. The ARIs developed vary structurally, and representative structural classes of ARIs include i) carboxylic acid derivatives (such as Epalrestat, Alrestatin, Zopalrestat, Zenarestat, Ponalrestat, Lidorestat, and Tolrestat), ii) spirohydantoins and related cyclic amides (such as Sorbinil, Minalrestat, and Fidarestat), and iii) phenolic derivatives (related to Benzopyran-4-one and Chalcone). Among these inhibitors, Epalrestat is the only commercially available inhibitor till date. In addition, some other ARIs such as Sorbinil and Ranirestat had been advanced into late stage of clinical trials and found to be safe for human use. The role of various natural ARIs in management of diabetic complications will be discussed. Adapting ARIs could prevent sepsis complications, prevent angiogenesis, ameliorate mild or asymptomatic diabetic cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy and appear to be a promising strategy for the treatment of endotoxemia and other ROS-induced inflammatory diseases. The role of ARIs in non-diabetic diseases will also be discussed.