Improving the Deeplabv3+ Model with Attention Mechanisms Applied to Eye Detection and Segmentation

Research on eye detection and segmentation is even more important with mask-wearing measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is necessary to build an eye image detection and segmentation dataset (EIMDSD), including labels for detecting and segmenting. In this study, we established a dataset to reduce elaboration for chipping eye images and denoting labels. An improved DeepLabv3+ network architecture (IDLN) was also proposed for applying it to the benchmark segmentation datasets. The IDLN was modified by cascading convolutional block attention modules (CBAM) with MobileNetV2. Experiments were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the EIMDSD dataset in human eye image detection and segmentation with different deep learning models. The result shows that the IDLN model achieves the appropriate segmentation accuracy for both eye images, while the UNet and ISANet models show the best results for the left eye data and the right eye data among the tested models.

Single-cell screening of SARS-CoV-2 target cells in pets, livestock, poultry and wildlife (preprint)

A few animals have been suspected to be intermediate hosts of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, a large-scale single-cell screening of SARS-CoV-2 target cells on a wide variety of animals is missing. Here, we constructed the single-cell atlas for 11 representative species in pets, livestock, poultry, and wildlife. Notably, the proportion of SARS-CoV-2 target cells in cat was found considerably higher than other species we investigated and SARS-CoV-2 target cells were detected in multiple cell types of domestic pig, implying the necessity to carefully evaluate the risk of cats during the current COVID-19 pandemic and keep pigs under surveillance for the possibility of becoming intermediate hosts in future coronavirus outbreak. Furthermore, we screened the expression patterns of receptors for 144 viruses, resulting in a comprehensive atlas of virus target cells. Taken together, our work provides a novel and fundamental strategy to screen virus target cells and susceptible species, based on single-cell transcriptomes we generated for domesticated animals and wildlife, which could function as a valuable resource for controlling current pandemics and serve as an early warning system for coping with future infectious disease threats.