SRI VENKATESWARA COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
(Autonomous)
DEPARTMENT OF DATA SCIENCE
Enhanced Diabetic Retinopathy Detection: An Explainable
Semi-Supervised Approach Using Contrastive Learning
Course: B. Tech Year: IV Sem: II Section: B Project ID: CSD26A02
ABSTRACT
Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a leading cause of vision impairment worldwide, requiring early and
accurate detection for effective treatment. Traditional supervised deep learning models demand large-
scale annotated datasets, which are often costly and time-consuming to obtain in the medical domain.
To address this challenge, we propose an enhanced semi-supervised framework for DR detection that
leverages contrastive learning to utilize both labeled and unlabeled retinal fundus images. Our
approach learns robust feature representations by maximizing inter-class separability while
preserving intra-class similarity, thereby improving classification performance with limited labeled
data. Furthermore, we integrate explainable AI techniques, such as Grad-CAM and attention maps, to
provide interpretable insights into model predictions, ensuring trust and transparency for clinical
adoption. Experimental evaluations on benchmark DR datasets demonstrate that the proposed method
achieves superior accuracy and generalization compared to conventional supervised baselines, while
requiring fewer annotations. This work highlights the potential of explainable semi-supervised
contrastive learning as a scalable and reliable solution for automated diabetic retinopathy detection in
real-world healthcare settings.
Project Team:
Student Roll Phone Signature of the
Name of the student
Number Number Number Student
S1 22BFA32117 SANA SAI PRANEETH 9515883403
S2 22BFA32112 POSA VAISHNAVI 7989808417
S3 22BFA32081 KOTHAPALLI KARTHIK 6304773886
S4 22BFA32085 M VENU GOPAL 9676501608
Name of the Guide: [Link].
Signature of the Guide Project Coordinator HOD/CSD
Academic Year 2025-2026