Mixup-Inf-Net: A data augmentation algorithm for segmentation of new coronary pneumonia infections

In 2020, the global spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 exposed entire world to a severe health crisis. This has limited fast and accurate screening of suspected cases due to equipment shortages and and harsh testing environments. The current diagnosis of suspected cases has benefited greatly from the use of radiographic brain imaging, also including X-ray and scintigraphy, as a crucial addition to screening tests for new coronary pneumonia disease. However, it is impractical to gather enormous volumes of data quickly, which makes it difficult for depth models to be trained. To solve these problems, we obtained a new dataset by data augmentation Mixup method for the used chest CT slices. It uses lung infection segmentation (Inf-Net [1]) in a deep network and adds a learning framework with semi-supervised to form a Mixup-Inf-Net semi-supervised learning framework model to identify COVID-19 infection area from chest CT slices. The system depends primarily on unlabeled data and merely a minimal amount of annotated data is required;therefore, the unlabeled data generated by Mixup provides good assistance. Our framework can be used to improve improve learning and performance. The SemiSeg dataset and the actual 3D CT images that we produced are used in a variety of tests, and the analysis shows that Mixup-Inf-Net semi-supervised outperforms most SOTA segmentation models learning framework model in this study, which also enhances segmentation performance. © 2023 SPIE.

Multi-Joint Unit Network for COVID-19 Diagnosis using X-Ray and CT Images

The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused a health crisis globally. Automated diagnostic methods can control the spread of the pandemic, as well as assists physicians to tackle high workload conditions through the quick treatment of affected patients. Owing to the scarcity of medical images and from different resources, the present image heterogeneity has raised challenges for achieving effective approaches to network training and effectively learning robust features. We propose a multi-joint unit network for the diagnosis of COVID-19 using the joint unit module, which leverages the receptive fields from multiple resolutions for learning rich representations. Existing approaches usually employ a large number of layers to learn the features, which consequently requires more computational power and increases the network complexity. To compensate, our joint unit module extracts low-, same-, and high-resolution feature maps simultaneously using different phases. Later, these learned feature maps are fused and utilized for classification layers. We observed that our model helps to learn sufficient information for classification without a performance loss and with faster convergence. We used three public benchmark datasets to demonstrate the performance of our network. Our proposed network consistently outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches by demonstrating better accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity and F1-score across all datasets. © 2022 ACM.

COVID-19 Instance Segmentation Network Based on Semantic Information Generating Proposals

The CT images of lungs of COVID-19 patients have distinct pathological features, segmenting the lesion area accurately by the method of deep learning, which is of great significance for the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 patients. Instance segmentation has higher sensitivity and can output the Bounding Boxes of the lesion region, however, the traditional instance segmentation method is weak in the segmentation of small lesions, and there is still room for improvement in the segmentation accuracy. We propose a instance segmentation network which is called as Semantic R-CNN. Firstly, a semantic segmentation branch is added on the basis of Mask-RCNN, and utilizing the image processing tool Skimage in Python to label the connected domain for the result of semantic segmentation, extracting the rectangular boundaries of connected domain and using them as Proposals, which will replace the Regional Proposal Network in the instance segmentation. Secondly, the Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling is introduced into the Feature Pyramid Network, then improving the feature fusion method in FPN. Finally, the cascade method is introduced into the detection branch of the network to optimize the Proposals. Segmentation experiments were carried out on the pathological lesion segmentation data set of CC-CCII, the average accuracy of the semantic segmentation is 40.56mAP, and compared with the Mask-RCNN, it has improved by 9.98mAP. After fusing the results of semantic segmentation and instance segmentation, the Dice coefficient is 80.7%, the sensitivity is 85.8%, and compared with the Inf-Net, it has increased by 1.6% and 8.06% respectively. The proposed network has improved the segmentation accuracy and reduced the false-negatives. © 2022 ACM.

A Systematic Literature Review of Deep Learning Algorithms for Segmentation of the COVID-19 Infection

Coronavirus has infected more than 753 million people, ranging in severity from one person to another, where more than six million infected people died worldwide. Computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) with artificial intelligence (AI) showed outstanding performance in effectively diagnosing this virus in real-time. Computed tomography is a complementary diagnostic tool to clarify the damage of COVID-19 in the lungs even before symptoms appear in patients. This paper conducts a systematic literature review of deep learning methods for classifying the segmentation of COVID-19 infection in the lungs. We used the methodology of systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) flow method. This research aims to systematically analyze the supervised deep learning methods, open resource datasets, data augmentation methods, and loss functions used for various segment shapes of COVID-19 infection from computerized tomography (CT) chest images. We have selected 56 primary studies relevant to the topic of the paper. We have compared different aspects of the algorithms used to segment infected areas in the CT images. Limitations to deep learning in the segmentation of infected areas still need to be developed to predict smaller regions of infection at the beginning of their appearance.

Detection of COVID-19 patient based on attention segmental recurrent neural network (ASRNN) Archimedes optimization algorithm using ultra-low-dose CT images

In this article, the detection of COVID-19 patient based on attention segmental recurrent neural network (ASRNN) with Archimedes optimization algorithm (AOA) using ultra-low-dose CT (ULDCT) images is proposed. Here, the ultra-low-dose CT images are gathered via real time dataset. The input images are preprocessed with the help of convolutional auto-encoder to recover the ULDCT images quality by removing noises. The preprocessed images are given to generalized additive models with structured interactions (GAMI) for extracting the radiomic features. The radiomic features, such as morphologic, gray scale statistic, Haralick texture are extracted using GAMI-Net. The ASRNN classifier, whose weight parameters optimized with Archimedes optimization algorithm enables COVID-19 ULDCT images classification as COVID-19 or normal. The proposed approach is activated in MATLAB platform. The proposed ASRNN-AOA-ULDCT attains accuracy 22.08%, 24.03%, 34.76%, 34.65%, 26.89%, 45.86%, and 32.14%;precision 23.34%, 26.45%, 34.98%, 27.06%, 35.87%, 34.44%, and 22.36% better than the existing methods, such as DenseNet-HHO-ULDCT, ELM-DNN-ULDCT, EDL-ULDCT, ResNet 50-ULDCT, SDL-ULDCT, CNN-ULDCT, and DRNN-ULDCT, respectively. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Identification and Localization of COVID-19Abnormalities on Chest Radiographs using Computer Vision

The Corona Virus (COVID 19) pandemic is quickly becoming the world's most deadly disease. The spreading rate is higher and the early detection helps in faster recovery. The existence of COVID 19 in individuals shall be detected using molecular analysis or through radiographs of lungs. As time and test kit are limited RT- PCR is not suitable to test all. The RT- PCR being a time-consuming process, diagnosis using chest radiographs needs no transportation as the modern X-ray systems are digitized. Deep learning takes an edge over other techniques as it deduces the features automatically and performs massively parallel computations. Multiple feature maps will help in accurate prediction. The objective of the proposed work is to develop a Computer Aided Deep Learning System identify and localize COVID-19 virus from other viruses and pneumonia. It helps to detect COVID-19 within a short period of time thereby improving the lifetime of the individuals. SIIM-FISABIO-RSNA benchmark datasets are used to examine the proposed system. Recall, Precision, Accuracy-rate, and F-Measure are the metrics used to prove the integrity of the system. © 2023 IEEE.

Application of a novel deep learning technique using CT images to implement the COVID-19 automatic diagnosis system on embedded systems

Problem A novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has created a worldwide pneumonia epidemic, and it's important to make a computer-aided way for doctors to use CT images to find people with COVID-19 as soon as possible. Aim: In this study, a fully automated, novel deep-learning method for diagnosis and prognostic analysis of COVID-19 on the embedded system is presented. Methods In this study, CT scans are utilized to identify individuals with COVID-19, pneumonia, or normal class. To achieve classification two pre-trained CNN models, namely ResNet50 and MobileNetv2, which are commonly used for image classification tasks. Additionally, a novel CNN architecture called CovidxNet-CT is introduced specifically designed for COVID-19 diagnosis using three classes of CT scans. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, k-fold cross-validation is employed, which is a common approach to estimate the performance of deep learning. The study is also evaluated the proposed method on two embedded system platforms, Jetson Nano and Tx2, to demonstrate its feasibility for deployment in resource-constrained environments. Results With an average accuracy of %98.83 and an AUC of 0.988, the system is trained and verified using a 4 fold cross-validation approach. Conclusion The optimistic outcomes from the investigation propose that CovidxNet-CT has the capacity to support radiologists and contribute towards the efforts to combat COVID-19. This study proposes a fully automated, deep-learning-based method for COVID-19 diagnosis and prognostic analysis that is specifically designed for use on embedded systems.

SAA-UNet: Spatial Attention and Attention Gate UNet for COVID-19 Pneumonia Segmentation from Computed Tomography.

The disaster of the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed numerous lives and wreaked havoc on the entire world due to its transmissible nature. One of the complications of COVID-19 is pneumonia. Different radiography methods, particularly computed tomography (CT), have shown outstanding performance in effectively diagnosing pneumonia. In this paper, we propose a spatial attention and attention gate UNet model (SAA-UNet) inspired by spatial attention UNet (SA-UNet) and attention UNet (Att-UNet) to deal with the problem of infection segmentation in the lungs. The proposed method was applied to the MedSeg, Radiopaedia 9P, combination of MedSeg and Radiopaedia 9P, and Zenodo 20P datasets. The proposed method showed good infection segmentation results (two classes: infection and background) with an average Dice similarity coefficient of 0.85, 0.94, 0.91, and 0.93 and a mean intersection over union (IOU) of 0.78, 0.90, 0.86, and 0.87, respectively, on the four datasets mentioned above. Moreover, it also performed well in multi-class segmentation with average Dice similarity coefficients of 0.693, 0.89, 0.87, and 0.93 and IOU scores of 0.68, 0.87, 0.78, and 0.89 on the four datasets, respectively. Classification accuracies of more than 97% were achieved for all four datasets. The F1-scores for the MedSeg, Radiopaedia P9, combination of MedSeg and Radiopaedia P9, and Zenodo 20P datasets were 0.865, 0.943, 0.917, and 0.926, respectively, for the binary classification. For multi-class classification, accuracies of more than 96% were achieved on all four datasets. The experimental results showed that the framework proposed can effectively and efficiently segment COVID-19 infection on CT images with different contrast and utilize this to aid in diagnosing and treating pneumonia caused by COVID-19.

Self-adaptive moth flame optimizer combined with crossover operator and Fibonacci search strategy for COVID-19 CT image segmentation.

The COVID-19 is one of the most significant obstacles that humanity is now facing. The use of computed tomography (CT) images is one method that can be utilized to recognize COVID-19 in early stage. In this study, an upgraded variant of Moth flame optimization algorithm (Es-MFO) is presented by considering a nonlinear self-adaptive parameter and a mathematical principle based on the Fibonacci approach method to achieve a higher level of accuracy in the classification of COVID-19 CT images. The proposed Es-MFO algorithm is evaluated using nineteen different basic benchmark functions, thirty and fifty dimensional IEEE CEC'2017 test functions, and compared the proficiency with a variety of other fundamental optimization techniques as well as MFO variants. Moreover, the suggested Es-MFO algorithm's robustness and durability has been evaluated with tests including the Friedman rank test and the Wilcoxon rank test, as well as a convergence analysis and a diversity analysis. Furthermore, the proposed Es-MFO algorithm resolves three CEC2020 engineering design problems to examine the problem-solving ability of the proposed method. The proposed Es-MFO algorithm is then used to solve the COVID-19 CT image segmentation problem using multi-level thresholding with the help of Otsu's method. Comparison results of the suggested Es-MFO with basic and MFO variants proved the superiority of the newly developed algorithm.

Fully feature fusion based neural network for COVID-19 lesion segmentation in CT images.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spreads around the world, seriously affecting people's health. Computed tomography (CT) images contain rich semantic information as an auxiliary diagnosis method. However, the automatic segmentation of COVID-19 lesions in CT images faces several challenges, including inconsistency in size and shape of the lesion, the high variability of the lesion, and the low contrast of pixel values between the lesion and normal tissue surrounding the lesion. Therefore, this paper proposes a Fully Feature Fusion Based Neural Network for COVID-19 Lesion Segmentation in CT Images (F3-Net). F3-Net uses an encoder-decoder architecture. In F3-Net, the Multiple Scale Module (MSM) can sense features of different scales, and Dense Path Module (DPM) is used to eliminate the semantic gap between features. The Attention Fusion Module (AFM) is the attention module, which can better fuse the multiple features. Furthermore, we proposed an improved loss function L o s s C o v i d - B C E that pays more attention to the lesions based on the prior knowledge of the distribution of COVID-19 lesions in the lungs. Finally, we verified the superior performance of F3-Net on a COVID-19 segmentation dataset, experiments demonstrate that the proposed model can segment COVID-19 lesions more accurately in CT images than benchmarks of state of the art.

Diagnosis of COVID-19 from CT Images and Respiratory Sound Signals Using Deep Learning Strategies

COVID-19 has been a major issue among various countries, and it has already affected millions of people across the world and caused nearly 4 million deaths. Various precautionary measures should be taken to bring the cases under control, and the easiest way for diagnosing the diseases should also be identified. An accurate analysis of CT has to be done for the treatment of COVID-19 infection, and this process is complex and it needs much attention from the specialist. It is also proved that the covid infection can be identified with the breathing sounds of the patient. A new framework was proposed for diagnosing COVID-19 using CT images and breathing sounds. The entire network is designed to predict the class as normal, COVID-19, bacterial pneumonia, and viral pneumonia using the multiclass classification network MLP. The proposed framework has two modules: (i) respiratory sound analysis framework and (ii) CT image analysis framework. These modules exhibit the workflow for data gathering, data preprocessing, and the development of the deep learning model (deep CNN + MLP). In respiratory sound analysis framework, the gathered audio signals are converted to spectrogram video using FFT analyzer. Features like MFCCs, ZCR, log energies, and Kurtosis are needed to be extracted for identifying dry/wet coughs, variability present in the signal, prevalence of higher amplitudes, and for increasing the performance in audio classification. All these features are extracted with the deep CNN architecture with the series of convolution, pooling, and ReLU (rectified linear unit) layers. Finally, the classification is done with a multilayer perceptron (MLP) classifier. In parallel to this, the diagnosis of the disease is improved by analyzing the CT images. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.

3D CNN-Based Classification of Severity in COVID-19 Using CT Images

With the pandemic worldwide due to COVID-19, several detections and diagnostic methods have been in place. One of the standard modes of detection is computed tomography imaging. With the availability of computing resources and powerful GPUs, the analyses of extensive image data have been possible. Our proposed work initially deals with the classification of CT images as normal and infected images, and later, from the infected data, the images are classified based on their severity. The proposed work uses a 3D convolution neural network model to extract all the relevant features from the CT scan images. The results are also compared with the existing state-of-the-art algorithms. The proposed work is evaluated in accuracy, precision, recall, kappa value, and Intersection over Union. The model achieved an overall accuracy of 94.234% and a kappa value of 0.894. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Computer-Aided Diagnosis of COVID-19 with Joint Instance Segmentation and Classification

To address the difficulty of small lesion area detection of COVID-19 patients in their lung CT images, the author has proposed an end-to-end network which using semantic segmentation to guide instance segmentation, and extending transfer learning to the classification of COVID-19 pneumonia, Common pneumonia and Normal. Firstly, in order to extract richer multi-scale features and increase the weight of low-level features, we have introduced the Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling(ASPP) into the Feature Pyramid Network(FPN), and proposed Multi-scale Reverse Attention Feature Pyramid Network, then having added a semantic segmentation branch to guide instance segmentation after the output of ASPP, finally, we have extracted the object category score by detector for auxiliary classification. Segmentation experiments were carried out on the dataset of CC-CCII and COVID-19 infection segmentation dataset, the mean average precision(mAP) is 39.57%, 35.36%, Compared with the COVID-CT-Mask-Net, it has improved by 5.52%, 2.33%, we also carried out classification experiments on the dataset that is from COVIDX-CT, the sensitivity and specificity of the model for detecting COVID-19 in test data are 95.88% and 98.95% respectively. Also, the sensitivity and specificity of the model for detecting Common pneumonia in test data are 98.62% and 99.25% respectively, the sensitivity and specificity of the model for detecting Normal in test data are 99.61% and 99.11% respectively, which are the best results based on this dataset and indicators, this shows that the proposed method can quickly and effectively help the clinician identify and diagnose COVID-19 patient through their lung CT images. © 2022 IEEE.

Detecting COVID-19 in chest images based on deep transfer learning and machine learning algorithms

BackgroundThis study aimed to propose an automatic prediction of COVID-19 disease using chest CT images based on deep transfer learning models and machine learning (ML) algorithms.ResultsThe dataset consisted of 5480 samples in two classes, including 2740 CT chest images of patients with confirmed COVID-19 and 2740 images of suspected cases was assessed. The DenseNet201 model has obtained the highest training with an accuracy of 100%. In combining pre-trained models with ML algorithms, the DenseNet201 model and KNN algorithm have received the best performance with an accuracy of 100%. Created map by t-SNE in the DenseNet201 model showed not any points clustered with the wrong class.ConclusionsThe mentioned models can be used in remote places, in low- and middle-income countries, and laboratory equipment with limited resources to overcome a shortage of radiologists.

A joint segmentation and classification framework for COVID-19 infection segmentation and detection from chest CT images

In COVID19 management, CT images are used as noninvasive diagnostic tools for screening and disease monitoring. Segmentation of infections provides valuable visual interpretations in the process of prognosis and decision making. Segmentation of COVID19 infection from chest CT images is challenging due to the presence of multiple infection types and complex morphological patterns. This paper presents a novel multi task learning framework for COVID19 infection segmentation and detection. The proposed model called DB-YNet, is built on YNet architecture with a dense bottleneck and attention based UNet backbone. This model is trained and tested with standard datasets, demonstrating superior segmentation and classification metrics. It achieves a Dice score of 0.9923 for segmentation, and classification accuracies of 0. 0.9875 and 0.9961 under binary and multi class classifications respectively. In COVID19 triage, DB-YNet is a promising tool to assist physicians in the early identification of COVID19 infected patients for quick clinical interventions. © 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Boosting COVID-19 Severity Detection with Infection-Aware Contrastive Mixup Classification

This paper presents our solution for the 2nd COVID-19 Severity Detection Competition. This task aims to distinguish the Mild, Moderate, Severe, and Critical grades in COVID-19 chest CT images. In our approach, we devise a novel infection-aware 3D Contrastive Mixup Classification network for severity grading. Specifically, we train two segmentation networks to first extract the lung region and then the inner lesion region. The lesion segmentation mask serves as complementary information for the original CT slices. To relieve the issue of imbalanced data distribution, we further improve the advanced Contrastive Mixup Classification network by weighted cross-entropy loss. On the COVID-19 severity detection leaderboard, our approach won the first place with a Macro F1 Score of 51.76%. It significantly outperforms the baseline method by over 11.46%. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

COVID-19 diagnosis utilizing wavelet-based contrastive learning with chest CT images.

The pandemic caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has continuously wreaked havoc on human health. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system based on chest computed tomography (CT) has been a hotspot option for COVID-19 diagnosis. However, due to the high cost of data annotation in the medical field, it happens that the number of unannotated data is much larger than the annotated data. Meanwhile, having a highly accurate CAD system always requires a large amount of labeled data training. To solve this problem while meeting the needs, this paper presents an automated and accurate COVID-19 diagnosis system using few labeled CT images. The overall framework of this system is based on the self-supervised contrastive learning (SSCL). Based on the framework, our enhancement of our system can be summarized as follows. 1) We integrated a two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform with contrastive learning to fully use all the features from the images. 2) We use the recently proposed COVID-Net as the encoder, with a redesign to target the specificity of the task and learning efficiency. 3) A new pretraining strategy based on contrastive learning is applied for broader generalization ability. 4) An additional auxiliary task is exerted to promote performance during classification. The final experimental result of our system attained 93.55%, 91.59%, 96.92% and 94.18% for accuracy, recall, precision, and F1-score respectively. By comparing results with the existing schemes, we demonstrate the performance enhancement and superiority of our proposed system.

Low-Dose COVID-19 CT Image Denoising Using CNN and its Method Noise Thresholding.

Noise in computed tomography (CT) images may occur due to low radiation dose. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to reduce the noise from low dose CT images so that the risk of high radiation dose can be reduced. BACKGROUND: The novel corona virus outbreak has ushered in different new areas of research in medical instrumentation and technology. Medical diagnostics and imaging are one of the ways in which the area and level of infection can be detected. OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 attacks people who have less immunity, so infants, kids, and pregnant women are more vulnerable to the infection. So they need to undergo CT scanning to find the infection level. But the high radiation diagnostic is also fatal for them, so the intensity of radiation needs to be reduced significantly, which may generate the noise in the CT images. METHOD: In this paper, a new denoising technique for such low dose Covid-19 CT images has been introduced using a convolution neural network (CNN) and the method noise-based thresholding. The major concern of the methodology for reducing the risk associated with radiation while diagnosing. RESULTS: The results are evaluated visually and also by using standard performance metrics. From comparative analysis, it was observed that proposed works gives better outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed low-dose COVID-19 CT image denoising model is therefore concluded to have a better potential to be effective in various pragmatic medical image processing applications in terms of noise suppression and clinical edge preservation.

Harris hawks optimization for COVID-19 diagnosis based on multi-threshold image segmentation.

Digital image processing techniques and algorithms have become a great tool to support medical experts in identifying, studying, diagnosing certain diseases. Image segmentation methods are of the most widely used techniques in this area simplifying image representation and analysis. During the last few decades, many approaches have been proposed for image segmentation, among which multilevel thresholding methods have shown better results than most other methods. Traditional statistical approaches such as the Otsu and the Kapur methods are the standard benchmark algorithms for automatic image thresholding. Such algorithms provide optimal results, yet they suffer from high computational costs when multilevel thresholding is required, which is considered as an optimization matter. In this work, the Harris hawks optimization technique is combined with Otsu's method to effectively reduce the required computational cost while maintaining optimal outcomes. The proposed approach is tested on a publicly available imaging datasets, including chest images with clinical and genomic correlates, and represents a rural COVID-19-positive (COVID-19-AR) population. According to various performance measures, the proposed approach can achieve a substantial decrease in the computational cost and the time to converge while maintaining a level of quality highly competitive with the Otsu method for the same threshold values.

Deep learning-based technique for lesions segmentation in CT scan images for COVID-19 prediction.

Since 2019, COVID-19 disease caused significant damage and it has become a serious health issue in the worldwide. The number of infected and confirmed cases is increasing day by day. Different hospitals and countries around the world to this day are not equipped enough to treat these cases and stop this pandemic evolution. Lung and chest X-ray images (e.g., radiography images) and chest CT images are the most effective imaging techniques to analyze and diagnose the COVID-19 related problems. Deep learning-based techniques have recently shown good performance in computer vision and healthcare fields. We propose developing a new deep learning-based application for COVID-19 segmentation and analysis in this work. The proposed system is developed based on the context aggregation neural network. This network consists of three main modules: the context fuse model (CFM), attention mix module (AMM) and a residual convolutional module (RCM). The developed system can detect two main COVID-19-related regions: ground glass opacity and consolidation area in CT images. Generally, these lesions are often related to common pneumonia and COVID 19 cases. Training and testing experiments have been conducted using the COVID-x-CT dataset. Based on the obtained results, the developed system demonstrated better and more competitive results compared to state-of-the-art performances. The numerical findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed work by outperforming other works in terms of accuracy by a factor of over 96.23%.