Diabetes Mellitus, or Diabetes, is a disease in which a person's body fails to respond to insulin released by their pancreas, or it does not produce sufficient insulin. People suffering from diabetes are at high risk of developing various eye diseases over time. As a result of advances in machine learning techniques, early detection of diabetic eye disease using an automated system brings substantial benefits over manual detection. A variety of advanced studies relating to the detection of diabetic eye disease have recently been published. This paper presents a systematic survey of automated approaches to diabetic eye disease detection from several aspects, namely: i) available datasets, ii) image preprocessing techniques, iii) deep learning models and iv) performance evaluation metrics. The survey provides a comprehensive synopsis of diabetic eye disease detection approaches, including state of the art field approaches, which aim to provide valuable insight into research communities, healthcare professionals and patients with diabetes.