Multiple Brain Tumor Classification with Dense CNN Architecture Using Brain MRI Images.

Brain MR images are the most suitable method for detecting chronic nerve diseases such as brain tumors, strokes, dementia, and multiple sclerosis. They are also used as the most sensitive method in evaluating diseases of the pituitary gland, brain vessels, eye, and inner ear organs. Many medical image analysis methods based on deep learning techniques have been proposed for health monitoring and diagnosis from brain MRI images. CNNs (Convolutional Neural Networks) are a sub-branch of deep learning and are often used to analyze visual information. Common uses include image and video recognition, suggestive systems, image classification, medical image analysis, and natural language processing. In this study, a new modular deep learning model was created to retain the existing advantages of known transfer learning methods (DenseNet, VGG16, and basic CNN architectures) in the classification process of MR images and eliminate their disadvantages. Open-source brain tumor images taken from the Kaggle database were used. For the training of the model, two types of splitting were utilized. First, 80% of the MRI image dataset was used in the training phase and 20% in the testing phase. Secondly, 10-fold cross-validation was used. When the proposed deep learning model and other known transfer learning methods were tested on the same MRI dataset, an improvement in classification performance was obtained, but an increase in processing time was observed.

Monkeypox Detection Using CNN with Transfer Learning.

Monkeypox disease is caused by a virus that causes lesions on the skin and has been observed on the African continent in the past years. The fatal consequences caused by virus infections after the COVID pandemic have caused fear and panic among the public. As a result of COVID reaching the pandemic dimension, the development and implementation of rapid detection methods have become important. In this context, our study aims to detect monkeypox disease in case of a possible pandemic through skin lesions with deep-learning methods in a fast and safe way. Deep-learning methods were supported with transfer learning tools and hyperparameter optimization was provided. In the CNN structure, a hybrid function learning model was developed by customizing the transfer learning model together with hyperparameters. Implemented on the custom model MobileNetV3-s, EfficientNetV2, ResNET50, Vgg19, DenseNet121, and Xception models. In our study, AUC, accuracy, recall, loss, and F1-score metrics were used for evaluation and comparison. The optimized hybrid MobileNetV3-s model achieved the best score, with an average F1-score of 0.98, AUC of 0.99, accuracy of 0.96, and recall of 0.97. In this study, convolutional neural networks were used in conjunction with optimization of hyperparameters and a customized hybrid function transfer learning model to achieve striking results when a custom CNN model was developed. The custom CNN model design we have proposed is proof of how successfully and quickly the deep learning methods can achieve results in classification and discrimination.

Predicting students at risk of academic failure using ensemble model during pandemic in a distance learning system.

Predicting students at risk of academic failure is valuable for higher education institutions to improve student performance. During the pandemic, with the transition to compulsory distance learning in higher education, it has become even more important to identify these students and make instructional interventions to avoid leaving them behind. This goal can be achieved by new data mining techniques and machine learning methods. This study took both the synchronous and asynchronous activity characteristics of students into account to identify students at risk of academic failure during the pandemic. Additionally, this study proposes an optimal ensemble model predicting students at risk using a combination of relevant machine learning algorithms. Performances of over two thousand university students were predicted with an ensemble model in terms of gender, degree, number of downloaded lecture notes and course materials, total time spent in online sessions, number of attendances, and quiz score. Asynchronous learning activities were found more determinant than synchronous ones. The proposed ensemble model made a good prediction with a specificity of 90.34%. Thus, practitioners are suggested to monitor and organize training activities accordingly.

An Efficient and Reliable Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network.

In wireless sensor networks (WSN), flooding increases the reliability in terms of successful transmission of a packet with higher overhead. The flooding consumes the resources of the network quickly, especially in sensor networks, mobile ad-hoc networks, and vehicular ad-hoc networks in terms of the lifetime of the node, lifetime of the network, and battery lifetime, etc. This paper aims to develop an efficient and reliable protocol by using multicasting and unicasting to overcome the issue of higher overhead due to flooding. Unicasting is used when the desired destination is at a minimum distance to avoid an extra overhead and increases the efficiency of the network in terms of overhead and energy because unicasting is favorable where the distance is minimum. Similarly, multicasting is used when the desired destination is at maximum distance and increases the network's reliability in terms of throughput. The results are implemented in the Department of Computer Science, Bacha Khan University Charsadda (BKUC), Pakistan, as well as in the Network Simulator-2 (NS-2). The results are compared with benchmark schemes such as PUMA and ERASCA, and based on the results, the performance of the proposed approach is improved in terms of overhead, throughput, and packet delivery fraction by avoiding flooding.

Soft computing model on genetic diversity and pathotype differentiation of pathogens: A novel approach

Background Identifying and validating biomarkers' scores of polymorphic bands are important for studies related to the molecular diversity of pathogens. Although these validations provide more relevant results, the experiments are very complex and time-consuming. Besides rapid identification of plant pathogens causing disease, assessing genetic diversity and pathotype formation using automated soft computing methods are advantageous in terms of following genetic variation of pathogens on plants. In the present study, artificial neural network (ANN) as a soft computing method was applied to classify plant pathogen types and fungicide susceptibilities using the presence/absence of certain sequence markers as predictive features. Results A plant pathogen, causing downy mildew disease on cucurbits was considered as a model microorganism. Significant accuracy was achieved with particle swarm optimization (PSO) trained ANNs. Conclusions This pioneer study for estimation of pathogen properties using molecular markers demonstrates that neural networks achieve good performance for the proposed application.

Rapid automated classification of anesthetic depth levels using GPU based parallelization of neural networks.

The effect of anesthesia on the patient is referred to as depth of anesthesia. Rapid classification of appropriate depth level of anesthesia is a matter of great importance in surgical operations. Similarly, accelerating classification algorithms is important for the rapid solution of problems in the field of biomedical signal processing. However numerous, time-consuming mathematical operations are required when training and testing stages of the classification algorithms, especially in neural networks. In this study, to accelerate the process, parallel programming and computing platform (Nvidia CUDA) facilitates dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) was utilized. The system was employed to detect anesthetic depth level on related electroencephalogram (EEG) data set. This dataset is rather complex and large. Moreover, the achieving more anesthetic levels with rapid response is critical in anesthesia. The proposed parallelization method yielded high accurate classification results in a faster time.

Determining the appropriate amount of anesthetic gas using DWT and EMD combined with neural network.

The spectrum of EEG has been studied to predict the depth of anesthesia using variety of signal processing methods up to date. Those standard models have used the full spectrum of EEG signals together with the systolic-diastolic pressure and pulse values. As it is generally agreed today that the brain is in stable state and the delta-theta bands of the EEG spectrum remain active during anesthesia. Considering this background, two questions that motivates this paper. First, determining the amount of gas to be administered is whether feasable from the spectrum of EEG during the maintenance stage of surgical operations. Second, more specifically, the delta-theta bands of the EEG spectrum are whether sufficient alone for this aim. This research aims to answer these two questions together. Discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) were applied to the EEG signals to extract delta-theta bands. The power density spectrum (PSD) values of target bands were presented as inputs to multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network (NN), which predicted the gas level. The present study has practical implications in terms of using less data, in an effective way and also saves time as well.