The high prevalence of cataracts is still a serious public health problem as a leading cause of blindness, especially in
developing countries with limited health facilities. In this paper we propose a new screening method for cataract
diagnosis by easy-to-use and low cost imaging equipment such as commercially available digital cameras. The
difficulties in using this sort of digital camera equipment are seen in the observed images, the quality of which is not
sufficiently controlled; there is no control of illumination, for example. A sign of cataracts is a whitish color in the pupil
which usually is black, but it is difficult to automatically analyze color information under uncontrolled illumination
conditions. To cope with this problem, we analyze specular reflection in the pupil region. When an illumination light
hits the pupil, it makes a specular reflection on the frontal surface of the lens of the pupil area. Also the light goes
through the rear side of the lens and might be reflected again. Specular reflection always appears brighter than the
surrounding area and is also independent of the illumination condition, so this characteristic enables us to screen out
serious cataract robustly by analyzing reflections observed in the eye image. In this paper, we demonstrate the validity
of our method through theoretical discussion and experimental results. By following the simple guidelines shown in this
paper, anyone would be able to screen for cataracts.
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