Real-Time Health Monitoring in WBANs using Ensemble Metaheuristic-Driven Machine Learning Routing Protocol (MDML-RP)

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) are helpful for remote health monitoring, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the limited batteries of bio-sensors, energy-efficient routing is vital to achieve load-balancing and prolong the network's lifetime. Although many routing techniques have been presented for WBANs, they were designed for an application, and their performance may be degraded in other applications. In this paper, an ensemble Metaheuristic-Driven Machine Learning Routing Protocol (MDML-RP) is introduced as an adaptive real-time remote health monitoring in WBANs. The motivation behind this technique is to utilize the superior route optimization solutions offered by metaheuristics and to integrate them with the real-time routing capability of machine learning. The proposed method involves two phases: offline model tuning and online routing. During the offline pre-processing step, a metaheuristic algorithm based on the whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is used to optimize routes across various WBAN configurations. By applying WOA for multiple WBANs, a comprehensive dataset is generated. This dataset is then used to train and test a machine learning regressor that is based on support vector regression (SVR). Next, the optimized MDML-RP model is applied as an adaptive real-time protocol, which can efficiently respond to just-in-time requests in new, previously unseen WBANs. Simulation results in various WBANs demonstrate the superiority of the MDML-RP model in terms of application-specific performance measures when compared with the existing heuristic, metaheuristic, and machine learning protocols. The findings indicate that the proposed MDML-RP model achieves noteworthy improvement rates across various performance metrics when compared to the existing techniques, with an average improvement of 42.3% for the network lifetime, 15.4% for reliability, 31.3% for path loss, and 31.7% for hot-spot temperature.

Optimal evaluation of re-opening policies for COVID-19 through the use of metaheuristic schemes.

A new contagious disease or unidentified COVID-19 variants could provoke a new collapse in the global economy. Under such conditions, companies, factories, and organizations must adopt reopening policies that allow their operations to reduce economic effects. Effective reopening policies should be designed using mathematical models that emulate infection chains through individual interactions. In contrast to other modeling approaches, agent-based schemes represent a computational paradigm used to characterize the person-to-person interactions of individuals inside a system, providing accurate simulation results. To evaluate the optimal conditions for a reopening policy, authorities and decision-makers need to conduct an extensive number of simulations manually, with a high possibility of losing information and important details. For this reason, the integration of optimization and simulation of reopening policies could automatically find the realistic scenario under which the lowest risk of infection was attained. In this paper, the metaheuristic technique of the Whale Optimization Algorithm is used to find the solution with the minimal transmission risk produced by an agent-based model that emulates a hypothetical re-opening context. Our scheme finds the optimal results of different generical activation scenarios. The experimental results indicate that our approach delivers practical knowledge and essential estimations for identifying optimal re-opening strategies with the lowest transmission risk.

Comparative Analysis of Swarm Algorithms to Classification of covid19 on X-Rays

The use of Chest radiograph (CXR) images in the examination and monitoring of different lung disorders like infiltration, tuberculosis, pneumonia, atelectasis, and hernia has long been known. The detection of COVID-19 can also be done with CXR images. COVID-19, a virus that results in an infection of the upper respiratory tract and lungs, was initially detected in late 2019 in China's Wuhan province and is considered to majorly damage the airway and, thus, the lungs of people afflicted. From that time, the virus has quickly spread over the world, with the number of mortalities and cases increasing daily. The COVID-19 effects on lung tissue can be monitored via CXR. As a result, This paper provides a comparison regarding k-nearest neighbors (KNN), Support-vector machine (SVM), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGboost) classification techniques depending on Harris Hawks optimization algorithm (HHO), Salp swarm optimization algorithm (SSA), Whale optimization algorithm (WOA), and Gray wolf optimizer (GWO) utilized in this domain and utilized for feature selection in the presented work. The dataset used in this analysis consists of 9000 2D X-ray images in Poster anterior chest view, which has been categorized by using valid tests into two categories: 5500 images of Normal lungs and 4044 images of COVID-19 patients. All of the image sizes were set to 200 × 200 pixels. this analysis used several quantitative evaluation metrics like precision, recall, and F1-score. © 2022 IEEE.

Optimal DG Allocation Based on Pay-back Period by a Proposed Modification for Coronavirus Herd Immunity Optimization

Distribued Generations (DG) have economic, financial, and environmental benefits. DG reduces power losses in the distribution system but has a negative impact on the protection devices. In this article, the IEEE 33 bus system will be used and tested by adding up to three DG units using MATLAB/SIMULINK software. the optimization techniques that will be used are Grey Wolf Optimizer, Whale Optimization Algorithm, Genetic Algorithm, and Coronavirus Herd Immunity or COVID-19 optimization techniques to select the optimal site and size of the DG units based on the lowest pay-back period considering the voltage limits and power losses. The paper proposes a modified mutation operator for COVID-19 based on Gaussian and Cauchy mutations to have better performance and lower variance. The proposed algorithm is compared with the other optimization techniques. The proposed algorithm achieved better results, which proved to have competitive performance with state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms. © 2022 IEEE.

MTMC-AUR2CNet: Multi-textural multi-class attention recurrent residual convolutional neural network for COVID-19 classification using chest X-ray images.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has infected over 603 million confirmed cases as of September 2022, and its rapid spread has raised concerns worldwide. More than 6.4 million fatalities in confirmed patients have been reported. According to reports, the COVID-19 virus causes lung damage and rapidly mutates before the patient receives any diagnosis-specific medicine. Daily increasing COVID-19 cases and the limited number of diagnosis tool kits encourage the use of deep learning (DL) models to assist health care practitioners using chest X-ray (CXR) images. The CXR is a low radiation radiography tool available in hospitals to diagnose COVID-19 and combat this spread. We propose a Multi-Textural Multi-Class (MTMC) UNet-based Recurrent Residual Convolutional Neural Network (MTMC-UR2CNet) and MTMC-UR2CNet with attention mechanism (MTMC-AUR2CNet) for multi-class lung lobe segmentation of CXR images. The lung lobe segmentation output of MTMC-UR2CNet and MTMC-AUR2CNet are mapped individually with their input CXRs to generate the region of interest (ROI). The multi-textural features are extracted from the ROI of each proposed MTMC network. The extracted multi-textural features from ROI are fused and are trained to the Whale optimization algorithm (WOA) based DeepCNN classifier on classifying the CXR images into normal (healthy), COVID-19, viral pneumonia, and lung opacity. The experimental result shows that the MTMC-AUR2CNet has superior performance in multi-class lung lobe segmentation of CXR images with an accuracy of 99.47%, followed by MTMC-UR2CNet with an accuracy of 98.39%. Also, MTMC-AUR2CNet improves the multi-textural multi-class classification accuracy of the WOA-based DeepCNN classifier to 97.60% compared to MTMC-UR2CNet.

Boosting Whale Optimizer with Quasi-Oppositional Learning and Gaussian Barebone for Feature Selection and COVID-19 Image Segmentation.

Whale optimization algorithm (WOA) tends to fall into the local optimum and fails to converge quickly in solving complex problems. To address the shortcomings, an improved WOA (QGBWOA) is proposed in this work. First, quasi-opposition-based learning is introduced to enhance the ability of WOA to search for optimal solutions. Second, a Gaussian barebone mechanism is embedded to promote diversity and expand the scope of the solution space in WOA. To verify the advantages of QGBWOA, comparison experiments between QGBWOA and its comparison peers were carried out on CEC 2014 with dimensions 10, 30, 50, and 100 and on CEC 2020 test with dimension 30. Furthermore, the performance results were tested using Wilcoxon signed-rank (WS), Friedman test, and post hoc statistical tests for statistical analysis. Convergence accuracy and speed are remarkably improved, as shown by experimental results. Finally, feature selection and multi-threshold image segmentation applications are demonstrated to validate the ability of QGBWOA to solve complex real-world problems. QGBWOA proves its superiority over compared algorithms in feature selection and multi-threshold image segmentation by performing several evaluation metrics. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42235-022-00297-8.

Optimized speaker change detection approach for speaker segmentation towards speaker diarization based on deep learning

Speaker diarization is the partitioning of an audio source stream into homogeneous segments according to the speaker's identity. It can improve the readability of an automatic speech transcription by segmenting the audio stream into speaker turns and identifying the speaker's true identity when used in combination with speaker recognition systems. Generally, the automatic speaker diarization is done based on two phases, like the transformation of audio segments into feature representation and the clustering. In this paper, clustering along with a hybrid optimization technique is carried out for performing the speaker diarization. For that, the extracted features from the audio signal is processed under speech activity prediction in order to identify the speak segments. The diarization process is done by Deep Embedded Clustering (DEC) in which the constants are trained by the developed Fractional Anticorona Whale Optimization Algorithm (FrACWOA). The FrACWOA is a hybrid optimization technique, which is designed by adapting the concept of fractional theory, precaution behaviour of COVID-19 and hunting performance of whales. DEC performs the diarization, which concurrently learns the representation of features as well as cluster assignments with neural networks. Using a mapping from the information space to a lower-dimensional feature space, DEC repeatedly discovers the most effective solution for a clustering objective. On the basis of testing accuracy, diarization error, false discovery rate (FDR), false negative rate (FNR), and false positive rate (FPR) of 0.902, 0.627, 0.276, 0.117, and 0.118, respectively, the developed FrACWOA+DEC algorithm performed much better with six speakers using the EenaduPrathidwani dataset. Comparing the accuracy of the proposed method to existing approaches such as Active learning, DE+K-means, LSTM, MCGAN, ANN-ABC-LA, and ACWOA+DFC, the accuracy of the proposed method is 12.97%, 10.31%, 9.75%, 7.53%, 4.32%, and 2.106% higher when using 6 speakers. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

Whale optimization with random contraction and Rosenbrock method for COVID-19 disease prediction.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), instigated by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has hugely impacted global public health. To identify and intervene in critically ill patients early, this paper proposes an efficient, intelligent prediction model based on the machine learning approach, which combines the improved whale optimization algorithm (RRWOA) with the k-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier. In order to improve the problem that WOA is prone to fall into local optimum, an improved version named RRWOA is proposed based on the random contraction strategy (RCS) and the Rosenbrock method. To verify the capability of the proposed algorithm, RRWOA is tested against nine classical metaheuristics, nine advanced metaheuristics, and seven well-known WOA variants based on 30 IEEE CEC2014 competition functions, respectively. The experimental results in mean, standard deviation, the Friedman test, and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test are considered, proving that RRWOA won first place on 18, 24, and 25 test functions, respectively. In addition, a binary version of the algorithm, called BRRWOA, is developed for feature selection problems. An efficient prediction model based on BRRWOA and KNN classifier is proposed and compared with seven existing binary metaheuristics based on 15 datasets of UCI repositories. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm obtains the smallest fitness value in eleven datasets and can solve combinatorial optimization problems, indicating that it still performs well in discrete cases. More importantly, the model was compared with five other algorithms on the COVID-19 dataset. The experiment outcomes demonstrate that the model offers a scientific framework to support clinical diagnostic decision-making. Therefore, RRWOA is an effectively improved optimizer with efficient value.

Optimized speaker change detection approach for speaker segmentation towards speaker diarization based on deep learning

Speaker diarization is the partitioning of an audio source stream into homogeneous segments according to the speaker’s identity. It can improve the readability of an automatic speech transcription by segmenting the audio stream into speaker turns and identifying the speaker’s true identity when used in combination with speaker recognition systems. Generally, the automatic speaker diarization is done based on two phases, like the transformation of audio segments into feature representation and the clustering. In this paper, clustering along with a hybrid optimization technique is carried out for performing the speaker diarization. For that, the extracted features from the audio signal is processed under speech activity prediction in order to identify the speak segments. The diarization process is done by Deep Embedded Clustering (DEC) in which the constants are trained by the developed Fractional Anticorona Whale Optimization Algorithm (FrACWOA). The FrACWOA is a hybrid optimization technique, which is designed by adapting the concept of fractional theory, precaution behaviour of COVID-19 and hunting performance of whales. DEC performs the diarization, which concurrently learns the representation of features as well as cluster assignments with neural networks. Using a mapping from the information space to a lower-dimensional feature space, DEC repeatedly discovers the most effective solution for a clustering objective. On the basis of testing accuracy, diarization error, false discovery rate (FDR), false negative rate (FNR), and false positive rate (FPR) of 0.902, 0.627, 0.276, 0.117, and 0.118, respectively, the developed FrACWOA+DEC algorithm performed much better with six speakers using the EenaduPrathidwani dataset. Comparing the accuracy of the proposed method to existing approaches such as Active learning, DE+K-means, LSTM, MCGAN, ANN-ABC-LA, and ACWOA+DFC, the accuracy of the proposed method is 12.97%, 10.31%, 9.75%, 7.53%, 4.32%, and 2.106% higher when using 6 speakers.

Research on multi-modal autonomous diagnosis algorithm of COVID-19 based on whale optimized support vector machine and improved D-S evidence fusion.

Aiming at the problem that the single CT image signal feature recognition method in the self-diagnosis of diseases cannot accurately and reliably classify COVID-19, and it is easily confused with suspected cases. The collected CT signals and experimental indexes are extracted to construct different feature vectors. The support vector machine is optimized by the improved whale algorithm for the preliminary diagnosis of COVID-19, and the basic probability distribution function of each evidence is calculated by the posterior probability modeling method. Then the similarity measure is introduced to optimize the basic probability distribution function. Finally, the multi-domain feature fusion prediction model is established by using the weighted D-S evidence theory. The experimental results show that the fusion of multi-domain feature information by whale optimized support vector machine and improved D-S evidence theory can effectively improve the accuracy and the precision of COVID-19 autonomous diagnosis. The method of replacing a single feature parameter with multi-modal indicators (CT, routine laboratory indexes, serum cytokines and chemokines) provides a more reliable signal source for the diagnosis model, which can effectively distinguish COVID-19 from the suspected cases.

Optimized empirical model based on whale optimization algorithm for simulate daily reference crop evapotranspiration in different climatic regions of China

• The accuracy of the temperature, radiation and hybrid models improved by 12.05 %, 11.06% and 10.46% after being optimized by WOA. • The estimation accuracy of the temperature, radiation and hybrid models optimized by the whale algorithm were higher than the prediction result of the ELM model. • The empirical model with more input parameters has higher estimation accuracy than the empirical model with fewer parameters. The accurate estimation of reference crop evapotranspiration (ET 0) is of great significance to improve agricultural water use efficiency and optimize regional water resources management. At present, the applicability evaluation system of ET 0 models is still lacking in several climate regions in China, leading to the confusion in application of the ET 0 model in some specific regions. In this study, the daily meteorological data of 84 representative stations in four climate regions of China during the past 30 years (1991–2019) were selected to evaluate the ET 0 simulation results of twelve empirical models (four temperature models, five radiation models, and three hybrid models) on the daily scale, and the optimal models suitable for each climate region were screened. Whale optimization algorithm (WOA) was used to optimize the optimal model to improve the simulation accuracy, and the ET 0 results were compared with those predicted by extreme learning machine (ELM). The results showed that the estimation accuracy of the hybrid model was the best throughout China, followed by the radiation model, and the temperature model was relatively poor, with R2 ranges of 0.77–0.88, 0.60–0.86, and 0.58–0.82, respectively. Among the temperature-based models, Hargreaves-Samani and Improve Baier-Robertson model had the highest accuracy, with R2 of 0.80 and 0.79. Among the radiation-based models, Priestley-Taylor and Jensen-Haise models had the best accuracy, with R2 of 0.82 and 0.79. Among the hybrid models, Penman model had the highest accuracy, with R2 of 0.84. The accuracy of Hargreaves-Samani and Improve Baier-Robertson model in SMZ climate region was higher than TCZ, TMZ, and MPZ, and the accuracy of Jensen-Haise model in TCZ was the highest. The estimation accuracy of Priestley-Taylor and Penman models was similar in SMZ, TCZ, TMZ and MPZ. Using WOA to optimize the optimal temperature, radiation, and hybrid models, the prediction accuracy was improved by 12.05 %, 11.06 %, and 10.46 %, which were higher than the result of ELM model, with R2 of 0.90, 0.91, 0.95 and 0.90, respectively. Therefore, it is recommended to adopt WOA to optimize the empirical model to estimate the ET 0 all over China. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Hydrology is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Intervention-Aware Epidemic Prediction by Enhanced Whale Optimization

In recent decades, new epidemics have seriously endangered people’s lives and are now the leading cause of death in the world. The prevention of pandemic diseases has therefore become a top priority today. However, effective prevention remains a difficult challenge due to factors such as transmission mechanisms, lack of documentation of clinical outcomes, and population control. To this end, this paper proposes a susceptible-exposed-infected-quarantined (hospital or home)-recovered (SEIQHR) model based on human intervention strategies to simulate and predict recent outbreak transmission trends and peaks in Changchun, China. In this study, we introduce Levy operator and random mutation mechanism to reduce the possibility of the algorithm falling into a local optimum. The algorithm is then used to identify the parameters of the model optimally. The validity and adaptability of the proposed model are verified by fitting experiments to the number of infections in cities in China that had COVID-19 outbreaks in previous periods (Nanjing, Wuhan, and Xi’an), where the peaks and trends obtained from the experiments largely match the actual situation. Finally, the model is used to predict the direction of the disease in Changchun, China, for the coming period. The results indicated that the number of COVID-19 infections in Changchun would peak around April 3 and continue to decrease until the end of the outbreak. These predictions can help the government plan countermeasures to reduce the expansion of the epidemic. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Enhanced whale optimization algorithm for medical feature selection: A COVID-19 case study.

The whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is a prominent problem solver which is broadly applied to solve NP-hard problems such as feature selection. However, it and most of its variants suffer from low population diversity and poor search strategy. Introducing efficient strategies is highly demanded to mitigate these core drawbacks of WOA particularly for dealing with the feature selection problem. Therefore, this paper is devoted to proposing an enhanced whale optimization algorithm named E-WOA using a pooling mechanism and three effective search strategies named migrating, preferential selecting, and enriched encircling prey. The performance of E-WOA is evaluated and compared with well-known WOA variants to solve global optimization problems. The obtained results proved that the E-WOA outperforms WOA's variants. After E-WOA showed a sufficient performance, then, it was used to propose a binary E-WOA named BE-WOA to select effective features, particularly from medical datasets. The BE-WOA is validated using medical diseases datasets and compared with the latest high-performing optimization algorithms in terms of fitness, accuracy, sensitivity, precision, and number of features. Moreover, the BE-WOA is applied to detect coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disease. The experimental and statistical results prove the efficiency of the BE-WOA in searching the problem space and selecting the most effective features compared to comparative optimization algorithms.

Pulmonary Diffuse Airspace Opacities Diagnosis from Chest X-Ray Images Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks Fine-Tuned by Whale Optimizer.

The early diagnosis and the accurate separation of COVID-19 from non-COVID-19 cases based on pulmonary diffuse airspace opacities is one of the challenges facing researchers. Recently, researchers try to exploit the Deep Learning (DL) method's capability to assist clinicians and radiologists in diagnosing positive COVID-19 cases from chest X-ray images. In this approach, DL models, especially Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN), propose real-time, automated effective models to detect COVID-19 cases. However, conventional DCNNs usually use Gradient Descent-based approaches for training fully connected layers. Although GD-based Training (GBT) methods are easy to implement and fast in the process, they demand numerous manual parameter tuning to make them optimal. Besides, the GBT's procedure is inherently sequential, thereby parallelizing them with Graphics Processing Units is very difficult. Therefore, for the sake of having a real-time COVID-19 detector with parallel implementation capability, this paper proposes the use of the Whale Optimization Algorithm for training fully connected layers. The designed detector is then benchmarked on a verified dataset called COVID-Xray-5k, and the results are verified by a comparative study with classic DCNN, DUICM, and Matched Subspace classifier with Adaptive Dictionaries. The results show that the proposed model with an average accuracy of 99.06% provides 1.87% better performance than the best comparison model. The paper also considers the concept of Class Activation Map to detect the regions potentially infected by the virus. This was found to correlate with clinical results, as confirmed by experts. Although results are auspicious, further investigation is needed on a larger dataset of COVID-19 images to have a more comprehensive evaluation of accuracy rates.

COVID-19 X-ray image segmentation by modified whale optimization algorithm with population reduction.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a massive disaster in every human life field, including health, education, economics, and tourism, over the last year and a half. Rapid interpretation of COVID-19 patients' X-ray images is critical for diagnosis and, consequently, treatment of the disease. The major goal of this research is to develop a computational tool that can quickly and accurately determine the severity of an illness using COVID-19 chest X-ray pictures and improve the degree of diagnosis using a modified whale optimization method (WOA). To improve the WOA, a random initialization of the population is integrated during the global search phase. The parameters, coefficient vector (A) and constant value (b), are changed so that the algorithm can explore in the early stages while also exploiting the search space extensively in the latter stages. The efficiency of the proposed modified whale optimization algorithm with population reduction (mWOAPR) method is assessed by using it to segment six benchmark images using multilevel thresholding approach and Kapur's entropy-based fitness function calculated from the 2D histogram of greyscale images. By gathering three distinct COVID-19 chest X-ray images, the projected algorithm (mWOAPR) is utilized to segment the COVID-19 chest X-ray images. In both benchmark pictures and COVID-19 chest X-ray images, comparisons of the evaluated findings with basic and modified forms of metaheuristic algorithms supported the suggested mWOAPR's improved performance.

WOANet: Whale optimized deep neural network for the classification of COVID-19 from radiography images.

Coronavirus Diseases (COVID-19) is a new disease that will be declared a global pandemic in 2020. It is characterized by a constellation of traits like fever, dry cough, dyspnea, fatigue, chest pain, etc. Clinical findings have shown that the human chest Computed Tomography(CT) images can diagnose lung infection in most COVID-19 patients. Visual changes in CT scan due to COVID-19 is subjective and evaluated by radiologists for diagnosis purpose. Deep Learning (DL) can provide an automatic diagnosis tool to relieve radiologists' burden for quantitative analysis of CT scan images in patients. However, DL techniques face different training problems like mode collapse and instability. Deciding on training hyper-parameters to adjust the weight and biases of DL by a given CT image dataset is crucial for achieving the best accuracy. This paper combines the backpropagation algorithm and Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) to optimize such DL networks. Experimental results for the diagnosis of COVID-19 patients from a comprehensive COVID-CT scan dataset show the best performance compared to other recent methods. The proposed network architecture results were validated with the existing pre-trained network to prove the efficiency of the network.

Sustainable closed-loop supply chain network under uncertainty: a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study proposes a sustainable closed-loop supply chain under uncertainty to create a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, a novel stochastic optimization model integrating strategic and tactical decision-making is presented for the sustainable closed-loop supply chain network design problem. This paper for the first time implements the concept of sustainable closed-loop supply chain for the application of ventilators using a stochastic optimization model. To make the problem more realistic, most of the parameters are considered to be uncertain along with the normal probability distribution. Since the proposed model is more complex than majority of previous studies, a hybrid whale optimization algorithm as an enhanced metaheuristic is proposed to solve the proposed model. The efficiency of the proposed model is tested in an Iranian medical ventilator production and distribution network in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results confirm the performance of the proposed algorithm in comparison with two other similar algorithms based on different multi-objective criteria. To show the impact of sustainability dimensions and COVID-19 pandemic for our proposed model, some sensitivity analyses are done. Generally, the findings confirm the performance of the proposed sustainable closed-loop supply chain for the pandemic cases like COVID-19.

Automatic Screening of COVID-19 Using an Optimized Generative Adversarial Network.

The quick spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has resulted in a global pandemic and more than fifteen million confirmed cases. To battle this spread, clinical imaging techniques, for example, computed tomography (CT), can be utilized for diagnosis. Automatic identification software tools are essential for helping to screen COVID-19 using CT images. However, there are few datasets available, making it difficult to train deep learning (DL) networks. To address this issue, a generative adversarial network (GAN) is proposed in this work to generate more CT images. The Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) is used to optimize the hyperparameters of GAN's generator. The proposed method is tested and validated with different classification and meta-heuristics algorithms using the SARS-CoV-2 CT-Scan dataset, consisting of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 images. The performance metrics of the proposed optimized model, including accuracy (99.22%), sensitivity (99.78%), specificity (97.78%), F1-score (98.79%), positive predictive value (97.82%), and negative predictive value (99.77%), as well as its confusion matrix and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, indicate that it performs better than state-of-the-art methods. This proposed model will help in the automatic screening of COVID-19 patients and decrease the burden on medicinal services frameworks.

Novel Feature Selection and Voting Classifier Algorithms for COVID-19 Classification in CT Images.

Diagnosis is a critical preventive step in Coronavirus research which has similar manifestations with other types of pneumonia. CT scans and X-rays play an important role in that direction. However, processing chest CT images and using them to accurately diagnose COVID-19 is a computationally expensive task. Machine Learning techniques have the potential to overcome this challenge. This article proposes two optimization algorithms for feature selection and classification of COVID-19. The proposed framework has three cascaded phases. Firstly, the features are extracted from the CT scans using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) named AlexNet. Secondly, a proposed features selection algorithm, Guided Whale Optimization Algorithm (Guided WOA) based on Stochastic Fractal Search (SFS), is then applied followed by balancing the selected features. Finally, a proposed voting classifier, Guided WOA based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), aggregates different classifiers' predictions to choose the most voted class. This increases the chance that individual classifiers, e.g. Support Vector Machine (SVM), Neural Networks (NN), k-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and Decision Trees (DT), to show significant discrepancies. Two datasets are used to test the proposed model: CT images containing clinical findings of positive COVID-19 and CT images negative COVID-19. The proposed feature selection algorithm (SFS-Guided WOA) is compared with other optimization algorithms widely used in recent literature to validate its efficiency. The proposed voting classifier (PSO-Guided-WOA) achieved AUC (area under the curve) of 0.995 that is superior to other voting classifiers in terms of performance metrics. Wilcoxon rank-sum, ANOVA, and T-test statistical tests are applied to statistically assess the quality of the proposed algorithms as well.

HSMA_WOA: A hybrid novel Slime mould algorithm with whale optimization algorithm for tackling the image segmentation problem of chest X-ray images.

Recently, a novel virus called COVID-19 has pervasive worldwide, starting from China and moving to all the world to eliminate a lot of persons. Many attempts have been experimented to identify the infection with COVID-19. The X-ray images were one of the attempts to detect the influence of COVID-19 on the infected persons from involving those experiments. According to the X-ray analysis, bilateral pulmonary parenchymal ground-glass and consolidative pulmonary opacities can be caused by COVID-19 - sometimes with a rounded morphology and a peripheral lung distribution. But unfortunately, the specification or if the person infected with COVID-19 or not is so hard under the X-ray images. X-ray images could be classified using the machine learning techniques to specify if the person infected severely, mild, or not infected. To improve the classification accuracy of the machine learning, the region of interest within the image that contains the features of COVID-19 must be extracted. This problem is called the image segmentation problem (ISP). Many techniques have been proposed to overcome ISP. The most commonly used technique due to its simplicity, speed, and accuracy are threshold-based segmentation. This paper proposes a new hybrid approach based on the thresholding technique to overcome ISP for COVID-19 chest X-ray images by integrating a novel meta-heuristic algorithm known as a slime mold algorithm (SMA) with the whale optimization algorithm to maximize the Kapur's entropy. The performance of integrated SMA has been evaluated on 12 chest X-ray images with threshold levels up to 30 and compared with five algorithms: Lshade algorithm, whale optimization algorithm (WOA), FireFly algorithm (FFA), Harris-hawks algorithm (HHA), salp swarm algorithms (SSA), and the standard SMA. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms SMA under Kapur's entropy for all the metrics used and the standard SMA could perform better than the other algorithms in the comparison under all the metrics.