Comparison of Random Forest and SVM Algorithms in Classification of Diabetic Retinopathy Based on Fundus Image Texture Features

Abstract

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a microangiopathic complication of diabetes mellitus that can cause visual impairment to permanent blindness. Early detection of DR is essential to prevent disease progression, but conventional methods require time, cost, and expertise that are not always available. This study aims to compare the performance of the Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms in DR classification based on texture features extracted from retinal fundus images. The dataset used consists of 3,000 retinal fundus images obtained from the Kaggle platform, divided into 2,400 training data and 600 test data. Image preprocessing includes conversion to grayscale, resizing to a resolution of 128×128 pixels, and normalization. Feature extraction is performed using a combination of Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) to produce a 14-dimensional feature vector. Performance evaluation uses accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, ROC curve, and 5-fold cross-validation metrics. The results showed that Random Forest significantly outperformed SVM with an accuracy of 96% compared to 64%, an AUC value of 0.99 compared to 0.72, and an average cross-validation accuracy of 94.5% compared to 63.42%. Random Forest also showed balanced performance in both classes with precision, recall, and F1-score of 0.96, while SVM experienced classification imbalance especially in the disease class. This study proves that Random Forest is a more optimal algorithm for an automatic DR detection system based on fundus image texture features and can support increasing the accessibility of DR screening in areas with limited specialist medical personnel.