Blood Slide Image Analysis to Classify WBC Types for Prediction Haematology Based on a Hybrid Model of CNN and Handcrafted Features

Abstract

White blood cells (WBCs) are one of the main components of blood produced by the bone marrow. WBCs are part of the immune system that protects the body from infectious diseases and an increase or decrease in the amount of any type that causes a particular disease. Thus, recognizing the WBC types is essential for diagnosing the patient’s health and identifying the disease. Analyzing blood samples to determine the amount and WBC types requires experienced doctors. Artificial intelligence techniques were applied to analyze blood samples and classify their types to help doctors distinguish between types of infectious diseases due to increased or decreased WBC amounts. This study developed strategies for analyzing blood slide images to classify WBC types. The first strategy is to classify WBC types by the SVM-CNN technique. The second strategy for classifying WBC types is by SVM based on hybrid CNN features, which are called VGG19-ResNet101-SVM, ResNet101-MobileNet-SVM, and VGG19-ResNet101-MobileNet-SVM techniques. The third strategy for classifying WBC types by FFNN is based on a hybrid model of CNN and handcrafted features. With MobileNet and handcrafted features, FFNN achieved an AUC of 99.43%, accuracy of 99.80%, precision of 99.75%, specificity of 99.75%, and sensitivity of 99.68%.