White blood cell image analysis for infection detection based on virtual hexagonal trellis (VHT) by using deep learning

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 17827
• Main Authors: Rashid, Shahid, Raza, Mudassar, Sharif, Muhammad, Azam, Faisal, Kadry, Seifedine, Kim, Jungeun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group 19.10.2023; Nature Publishing Group UK; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: Accuracy; Artificial intelligence; Blood; Classification; Computer engineering; Deep learning; Disease; Image processing; Immune system; Infections; Leukocytes; Support vector machines
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-44352-8

White blood cells (WBCs) are an indispensable constituent of the immune system. Efficient and accurate categorization of WBC is a critical task for disease diagnosis by medical experts. This categorization helps in the correct identification of medical problems. In this research work, WBC classes are categorized with the help of a transform learning model in combination with our proposed virtual hexagonal trellis (VHT) structure feature extraction method. The VHT feature extractor is a kernel-based filter model designed over a square lattice. In the first step, Graft Net CNN model is used to extract features of augmented data set images. Later, the VHT base feature extractor extracts useful features. The CNN-extracted features are passed to ant colony optimization (ACO) module for optimal features acquisition. Extracted features from the VHT base filter and ACO are serially merged to create a single feature vector. The merged features are passed to the support vector machine (SVM) variants for optimal classification. Our strategy yields 99.9% accuracy, which outperforms other existing methods.