This document discusses using a convolutional neural network to classify retinal images. Specifically, it aims to develop a system to distinguish between different retinal diseases using fundus images. The system would extract retinal features from the images like the retina, optic nerve and lesions. It then uses a CNN to detect multiple retinal diseases in fundus photographs from a structured analysis database. The CNN is trained on publicly available retinal image datasets. Neural networks have been found to effectively capture disease-specific color and texture features to enable automated diagnosis similar to human experts. The document also provides background on related work using deep learning and CNNs for tasks like lesion detection and classification of retinal diseases from fundus images.