Artificial Intelligence-Based Diagnosis of Diabetes Mellitus: Combining Fundus Photography with Traditional Chinese Medicine Diagnostic Methodology

In this study, we propose a technique for diagnosing both type 1 and type 2 diabetes in a quick, noninvasive way by using equipment that is easy to transport. Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease that affects public health globally. Although diabetes mellitus can be accurately diagnosed using conventional methods, these methods require the collection of data in a clinical setting and are unlikely to be feasible in areas with few medical resources. This technique combines an analysis of fundus photography of the physical and physiological features of the patient, namely, the tongue and the pulse, which are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine. A random forest algorithm was used to analyze the data, and the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 scores for the correct classification of diabetes were 0.85, 0.89, 0.67, and 0.76, respectively. The proposed technique for diabetes diagnosis offers a new approach to the diagnosis of diabetes, in that it may be convenient in regions that lack medical resources, where the early detection of diabetes is difficult to achieve.