MCSC-Net: COVID-19 detection using deep-Q-neural network classification with RFNN-based hybrid whale optimization.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 is the most dangerous virus, and its accurate diagnosis saves lives and slows its spread. However, COVID-19 diagnosis takes time and requires trained professionals. Therefore, developing a deep learning (DL) model on low-radiated imaging modalities like chest X-rays (CXRs) is needed. OBJECTIVE: The existing DL models failed to diagnose COVID-19 and other lung diseases accurately. This study implements a multi-class CXR segmentation and classification network (MCSC-Net) to detect COVID-19 using CXR images. METHODS: Initially, a hybrid median bilateral filter (HMBF) is applied to CXR images to reduce image noise and enhance the COVID-19 infected regions. Then, a skip connection-based residual network-50 (SC-ResNet50) is used to segment (localize) COVID-19 regions. The features from CXRs are further extracted using a robust feature neural network (RFNN). Since the initial features contain joint COVID-19, normal, pneumonia bacterial, and viral properties, the conventional methods fail to separate the class of each disease-based feature. To extract the distinct features of each class, RFNN includes a disease-specific feature separate attention mechanism (DSFSAM). Furthermore, the hunting nature of the Hybrid whale optimization algorithm (HWOA) is used to select the best features in each class. Finally, the deep-Q-neural network (DQNN) classifies CXRs into multiple disease classes. RESULTS: The proposed MCSC-Net shows the enhanced accuracy of 99.09% for 2-class, 99.16% for 3-class, and 99.25% for 4-class classification of CXR images compared to other state-of-art approaches. CONCLUSION: The proposed MCSC-Net enables to conduct multi-class segmentation and classification tasks applying to CXR images with high accuracy. Thus, together with gold-standard clinical and laboratory tests, this new method is promising to be used in future clinical practice to evaluate patients.

Integrated Prediction Framework for Clinical Scores of Cognitive Functions in ESRD Patients.

The clinical scores are applied to determine the stage of cognitive function in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). However, accurate clinical scores are hard to come by. This paper proposed an integrated prediction framework with GPLWLSV to predict clinical scores of cognitive functions in ESRD patients. GPLWLSV incorporated three parts, graph theoretic algorithm (GTA) and principal component analysis (PCA), whale optimization algorithm with Levy flight (LWOA), and least squares support vector regression machine (LSSVRM). GTA was adopted to extract features from the brain functional networks in ESRD patients, while PCA was used to select features. LSSVRM was built to explore the relationship between the selected features and the clinical scores of ESRD patients. Whale optimization algorithm (WOA) was introduced to select better parameters of the kernel function in LSSVRM; it aims to improve the exploration competence of LSSVRM. Levy flight was used to optimize the ability to jump out of local optima in WOA and improve the convergence of coefficient vectors in WOA, which lead to an increase in the generalization ability and convergence speed of WOA. The results validated that the prediction accuracy of GPLWLSV was higher than that of several comparable frameworks, such as GPSV, GPLSV, and GPWLSV. In particular, the average of root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) between the predicted scores and the actual scores of ESRD patients was 2.40, 2.06, and 9.83%, respectively. The proposed framework not only can predict the clinical scores more accurately but also can capture imaging markers associated with decline of cognitive function. It helps to understand the potential relationship between structural changes in the brain and cognitive function of ESRD patients.

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.

Weiszfeld, tree-seed, and whale optimization algorithms comparison via locating transportation facilities with weightings considering the vulnerability and uncertainty.

Searching for an optimum transportation facility location with emergency equipment and staff is essential for a specific region or a country. In this direction, this study addresses the following problems. First, the performances of the Weiszfeld, tree-seed, and whale optimization algorithms are compared, which is the first of its kind in the literature. Second, a new approach that tests the importance parameters' effectiveness in searching for an optimum transportation facility location with emergency equipment and staff is proposed. The Weiszfeld algorithm finds viable solutions with compact data, but it may not handle big data. In contrast, the flexibility of the tree-seed and whale optimization algorithm is literally an advantage when the number of parameters and variables increases. Therefore, there is a notable need to directly compare those algorithms' performances. If we do, the significance of extending the number of parameters with multiple weightings is appraised. According to the results, the Weiszfeld algorithm can be an almost flexible technique in continuous networks; however, it has reasonable drawbacks with discrete networks, while the tree-seed and whale optimization algorithms fit such conditions. On the other hand, these three methods do not show a fluctuating performance compared to one another based on the locating transportation facilities, and thus they deliver similar performance. Besides, although the value of accuracy is high with the application of the conventional technique Weiszfeld algorithm, it does not provide a significant performance accuracy advantage over the meta-heuristic methods.