The retinal images of the DIARETDB1 database (Standard Diabetic

Retinopathy Database Calibration level 1, version 1) [14] are

used to validate experimentally our proposed exudate detection
method. The DIARETDB1 database is available on the WEB, and
consists of a total of 89 RGB eye fundus images of 1500 1152
pixels, with 24 bits/pixel. However, it shall be observed that some
images do not contain exudates, but show signs of other lesions,
such as microaneurysms and hemorrhages [14]. All existing hard
exudates on the images of DIARETDB1 database were hand-labeled.
These hand-labeled images were taken as reference images (i.e. the
ground truth) to validate our method.