Combined Unet and CNN image classification model for COVID disease detection using CXR/CT imaging

Abstract

Accurate SARS-CoV-2 screening is made possible by automated Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) which reduces the stress on healthcare systems. Since Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is highly contagious, the transition chain can be broken through an early diagnosis by clinical knowledge and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Manual findings are time and labor-intensive. Even if Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) delivers quick findings, Chest X-ray (CXR) imaging is still a more trustworthy tool for disease classification and assessment. Several studies have been conducted using Deep Learning (DL) algorithms for COVID-19 detection. One of the biggest challenges in modernizing healthcare is extracting useful data from high-dimensional, heterogeneous, and complex biological data. Intending to introduce an automated COVID-19 diagnosis model, this paper develops a proficient optimization model that enhances the classification performance with better accuracy. The input images are initially pre-processed with an image filtering approach for noise removal and data augmentation to extend the dataset. Secondly, the images are segmented via U-Net and are given to classification using the Fused U-Net Convolutional Neural Network (FUCNN) model. Here, the performance of U-Net is enhanced through the modified Moth Flame Optimization (MFO) algorithm named Chaotic System-based MFO (CSMFO) by optimizing the weights of U-Net. The significance of the implemented model is confirmed over a comparative evaluation with the state-of-the-art models. Specifically, the proposed CSMFO-FUCNN attained 98.45% of accuracy, 98.63% of sensitivity, 98.98% of specificity, and 98.98% of precision.