Abstract. Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a common complication of diabetes that damages the eye's retina. Recognition DR as early as possible is very important to protect patients' vision. We propose a method for screening DR and distinguishing Prolifetive Diabetic Retinopathy (PDR) from Non-Prolifetive Retinopathy (NPDR) automatatically through color retinal images. This method evaluates the severity of DR by analyzing the appearnce of bright lesions and retinal vessel patterns. The bright lesions are extracted through morphlogical reconsturction. After that, the retinal vessels are automatically extracted using multiscale matched filters. Then the vessel patterns are analyzed by extracting the vessel net density. The experimental results domonstrate that it is a effective solution to screen DR and distinguish PDR from NPDR by only using color retinal images.