DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-64537/v2
To speed up the discovery of COVID-19 disease mechanisms by X-ray images, this research developed a new diagnosis platform using a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) that is able to assist radiologists with diagnosis by distinguishing COVID-19 pneumonia from non-COVID-19 pneumonia in patients based on chest X-ray classification and analysis. Such a tool can save time in interpreting chest X-rays and increase the accuracy and thereby enhance our medical capacity for the detection and diagnosis of COVID-19. The research idea is that a set of X-ray medical lung images (which include normal, infected by bacteria, infected by virus including COVID-19) are used to train a deep CNN that can distinguish between the noise and the useful information and then uses this training to interpret new images by recognizing patterns that indicate certain diseases such as coronavirus infection in the individual images. The supervised learning method is used as the process of learning from the training dataset and can be thought of as a doctor supervising the learning process. It becomes more accurate as the number of analyzed images grows, and the average accuracy is above 95%. In this way, it imitates the training for a doctor, but the theory is that since it is capable of learning from a far larger set of images than any human, it can have the potential of being more accurate.
This preprint is available for download as a PDF.
A statement of ethics approval
The research is approved by Middlemore hospital super clinic office & Health and Disability Ethics Committees.
We only use the historical data and X-ray images. Patient NHI will be used to join data together and will be removed once data quality checks have been performed. There will be no interaction with or impact on patients.