AIM:To evaluate the severity of different stages of diabetic retinopathy (DR)with optical coherence tomography (OCT) for the determination of retinal morphological changes of non-diabetic retinopathy (NDR) and non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) and with multifocal electroretinogram (mfERG) for the determination of changes in retinal electrical activity. METHODS：Totally 30 elderly people of 50-70 years (30 eyes) were taken as normal group,50 patients(50 eyes) with confirmed type 2 diabetes as experimental group. They were conducted OCT and mfERG examination in standard state, and the results were statistically analyzed. RESULTS:For patients with NPDR, retinal morphological changes showed that most of the neural epithelium of the macular area thickened, indicating that the retinal function was in continuous decline as for the risk factors of diabetes. Neural epithelium of the macular area didnt change obviously at NDR stage but obviously thickened at NPDR stage, indicating that the morphological changes of the macular area were not large in the early diabete, and with the exacerbations of diabetes, the morphology had great changes. Electrophysiological changes showed that the response density of mfERG P1 wave gradually decreased as the disease worsened, which significantly reduced at NDR stage, while at NPDR stage, declined more obviously, indicating that the electrical activity at the macular area had been weakened before retina morphological changes, which declined more obviously after morphological changes. CONCLUSION：Determinating the morphological and electrical activity changes of the macular area with OCT joint mfERG, both means had a high application value in the early observation, follow-up and further treatment options of the disease.