X-ray image based pneumonia classification using convolutional neural networks

Pneumonia is an infectious disease of the lungs. About one third to one half of pneumonia cases are caused by bacteria. Early diagnosis is a critical factor for a successful treatment process. Typically, the disease can be diagnosed by a radiologist using chest X-ray images. In fact, chest X-rays are currently the best available method for diagnosing pneumonia. However, the recognition of pneumonia symptoms is a challenging task that relies on the availability of expert radiologists. Such “human” diagnosis can be inaccurate and subjective due to lack of clarity and erroneous decision. Moreover, the error can increase more if the physician is requested to analyze tens of X-rays within a short period of time. Therefore, Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems were introduced to support and assist physicians and make their efforts more productive. In this paper, we investigate, design, implement and assess customized Convolutional Neural Networks to overcome the image-based Pneumonia classification problem. Namely, ResNet-50 and DenseNet-161 models were inherited to design customized deep network architecture and improve the overall pneumonia classification accuracy. Moreover, data augmentation was deployed and associated with standard datasets to assess the proposed models. Besides, standard performance measures were used to validate and evaluate the proposed system.