Abstract: A method is proposed for automatically analysing a retina image, to identify the presence of drusen which is indicative of age-related macular degeneration. The method proposes dividing a region of interest including the macula centre into patches, obtaining a local descriptor of each of the patches, reducing the dimensionality of the local descriptor by comparing the local descriptor to a tree-like clustering model and obtaining transformed data indicating the identity of the cluster. The transformed data is fed into an adaptive model which generates data indicative of the presence of drusen in the retinal image. Furthermore, the trans formed data can be used to obtain the location of the drusen within the image.