An Improved Deep Learning Framework for Automated Optic Disc Localization and Glaucoma Detection

Glaucoma disease causes irreversible damage to the optical nerve and it has the potential to cause permanent loss of vision.Glaucoma ranks as the second most prevalent cause of permanent blindness.Traditional glaucoma diagnosis requires a highly experienced specialist,costly equipment,and a lengthy wait time.For automatic glaucoma detection,state-of-the-art glaucoma detection methods include a segmentation-based method to calculate the cup-to-disc ratio.Other methods include multi-label segmentation networks and learning-based methods and rely on hand-crafted features.Localizing the optic disc(OD)is one of the key features in retinal images for detecting retinal diseases,especially for glaucoma disease detection.The approach presented in this study is based on deep classifiers for OD segmentation and glaucoma detection.First,the optic disc detection process is based on object detection using a Mask Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network(Mask-RCNN).The OD detection task was validated using the Dice score,intersection over union,and accuracy metrics.The OD region is then fed into the second stage for glaucoma detection.Therefore,considering only the OD area for glaucoma detection will reduce the number of classification artifacts by limiting the assessment to the optic disc area.For this task,VGG-16(Visual Geometry Group),Resnet-18(Residual Network),and Inception-v3 were pre-trained and fine-tuned.We also used the Support Vector Machine Classifier.The feature-based method uses region content features obtained by Histogram of Oriented Gradients(HOG)and Gabor Filters.The final decision is based on weighted fusion.A comparison of the obtained results from all classification approaches is provided.Classification metrics including accuracy and ROC curve are compared for each classification method.The novelty of this research project is the integration of automatic OD detection and glaucoma diagnosis in a global method.Moreover,the fusion-based decision system uses the glaucoma detection result obtained using several convolutional deep neural networks and the support vector machine classifier.These classification methods contribute to producing robust classification results.This method was evaluated using well-known retinal images available for research work and a combined dataset including retinal images with and without pathology.The performance of the models was tested on two public datasets and a combined dataset and was compared to similar research.The research findings show the potential of this methodology in the early detection of glaucoma,which will reduce diagnosis time and increase detection efficiency.The glaucoma assessment achieves about 98%accuracy in the classification rate,which is close to and even higher than that of state-of-the-art methods.The designed detection model may be used in telemedicine,healthcare,and computer-aided diagnosis systems.

Evaluating the Potentials of PLSR and SVR Models for Soil Properties Prediction Using Field Imaging,Laboratory VNIR Spectroscopy and Their Combination

Pedo-spectroscopy has the potential to provide valuable information about soil physical,chemical,and biological properties.Nowadays,wemay predict soil properties usingVNIRfield imaging spectra(IS)such as Prisma satellite data or laboratory spectra(LS).The primary goal of this study is to investigate machine learning models namely Partial Least Squares Regression(PLSR)and Support Vector Regression(SVR)for the prediction of several soil properties,including clay,sand,silt,organic matter,nitrate NO3-,and calcium carbonate CaCO_(3),using five VNIR spectra dataset combinations(%IS,%LS)as follows:C1(0%IS,100%LS),C2(20%IS,80%LS),C3(50%IS,50%LS),C4(80%IS,20%LS)and C5(100%IS,0%LS).Soil samples were collected at bare soils and at the upper(0–30 cm)layer.The data set has been split into a training dataset 80%of the collected data(n=248)and a validation dataset 20%of the collected data(n=61).The proposed PLSR and SVR models were trained then tested for each dataset combination.According to our results,SVR outperforms PLSR for both:C1(0%IS,100%LS)and C5(100%IS,0%LS).For Soil Organic Matter(SOM)prediction,it achieves(R^(2)=0.79%,RMSE=1.42%)and(R^(2)=0.76%,RMSE=1.3%),respectively.The data fusion has improved the soil property prediction.The highest improvement was obtained for the SOM property(R^(2)=0.80%,RMSE=1.39)when using the SVR model and applying the second Combination C2(20% of IS and 80%LS).

Robust ACO-Based Landmark Matching and Maxillofacial Anomalies Classification

Imagery assessment is an efficient method for detecting craniofacial anomalies.A cephalometric landmark matching approach may help in orthodontic diagnosis,craniofacial growth assessment and treatment planning.Automatic landmark matching and anomalies detection helps face the manual labelling lim-itations and optimize preoperative planning of maxillofacial surgery.The aim of this study was to develop an accurate Cephalometric Landmark Matching method as well as an automatic system for anatomical anomalies classification.First,the Active Appearance Model(AAM)was used for the matching process.This pro-cess was achieved by the Ant Colony Optimization(ACO)algorithm enriched with proximity information.Then,the maxillofacial anomalies were classified using the Support Vector Machine(SVM).The experiments were conducted on X-ray cephalograms of 400 patients where the ground truth was produced by two experts.The frameworks achieved a landmark matching error(LE)of 0.50±1.04 and a successful landmark matching of 89.47%in the 2 mm and 3 mm range and of 100%in the 4 mm range.The classification of anomalies achieved an accuracy of 98.75%.Compared to previous work,the proposed approach is simpler and has a comparable range of acceptable matching cost and anomaly classification.Results have also shown that it outperformed the K-nearest neigh-bors(KNN)classifier.

Explainable Heart Disease Prediction Using Ensemble-Quantum Machine Learning Approach

Nowadays,quantum machine learning is attracting great interest in a wide range offields due to its potential superior performance and capabilities.The massive increase in computational capacity and speed of quantum computers can lead to a quantum leap in the healthcarefield.Heart disease seriously threa-tens human health since it is the leading cause of death worldwide.Quantum machine learning methods can propose effective solutions to predict heart disease and aid in early diagnosis.In this study,an ensemble machine learning model based on quantum machine learning classifiers is proposed to predict the risk of heart disease.The proposed model is a bagging ensemble learning model where a quantum support vector classifier was used as a base classifier.Further-more,in order to make the model’s outcomes more explainable,the importance of every single feature in the prediction is computed and visualized using SHapley Additive exPlanations(SHAP)framework.In the experimental study,other stand-alone quantum classifiers,namely,Quantum Support Vector Classifier(QSVC),Quantum Neural Network(QNN),and Variational Quantum Classifier(VQC)are applied and compared with classical machine learning classifiers such as Sup-port Vector Machine(SVM),and Artificial Neural Network(ANN).The experi-mental results on the Cleveland dataset reveal the superiority of QSVC compared to the others,which explains its use in the proposed bagging model.The Bagging-QSVC model outperforms all aforementioned classifiers with an accuracy of 90.16%while showing great competitiveness compared to some state-of-the-art models using the same dataset.The results of the study indicate that quantum machine learning classifiers perform better than classical machine learning classi-fiers in predicting heart disease.In addition,the study reveals that the bagging ensemble learning technique is effective in improving the prediction accuracy of quantum classifiers.