Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a complication of diabetes that exists throughout the world. DR occurs due to a high ratio of glucose in the blood, which causes alterations in the retinal microvasculature. Without preemptive symptoms of DR, it leads to complete vision loss. However, early screening through computer-assisted diagnosis (CAD) tools and proper treatment have the ability to control the prevalence of DR. Manual inspection of morphological changes in retinal anatomic parts are tedious and challenging tasks. Therefore, many CAD systems were developed in the past to assist ophthalmologists for observing inter- and intra-variations. In this paper, a recent review of state-of-the-art CAD systems for diagnosis of DR is presented. We describe all those CAD systems that have been developed by various computational intelligence and image processing techniques. The limitations and future trends of current CAD systems are also described in detail to help researchers. Moreover, potential CAD systems are also compared in terms of statistical parameters to quantitatively evaluate them. The comparison results indicate that there is still a need for accurate development of CAD systems to assist in the clinical diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy.