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Convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries

Malaria is an infectious disease caused by Plasmodium parasites, transmitted through mosquito bites. Symptoms include fever, headache, and vomiting, and in severe cases, seizures and coma. The World Health Organization reports that there were 228 million cases and 405,000 deaths in 2018, with Africa...

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Autores principales: Zhao, Oliver S., Kolluri, Nikhil, Anand, Anagata, Chu, Nicholas, Bhavaraju, Ravali, Ojha, Aditya, Tiku, Sandhya, Nguyen, Dat, Chen, Ryan, Morales, Adriane, Valliappan, Deepti, Patel, Juhi P., Nguyen, Kevin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7413078/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32832279
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9674
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author Zhao, Oliver S.
Kolluri, Nikhil
Anand, Anagata
Chu, Nicholas
Bhavaraju, Ravali
Ojha, Aditya
Tiku, Sandhya
Nguyen, Dat
Chen, Ryan
Morales, Adriane
Valliappan, Deepti
Patel, Juhi P.
Nguyen, Kevin
author_facet Zhao, Oliver S.
Kolluri, Nikhil
Anand, Anagata
Chu, Nicholas
Bhavaraju, Ravali
Ojha, Aditya
Tiku, Sandhya
Nguyen, Dat
Chen, Ryan
Morales, Adriane
Valliappan, Deepti
Patel, Juhi P.
Nguyen, Kevin
author_sort Zhao, Oliver S.
collection PubMed
description Malaria is an infectious disease caused by Plasmodium parasites, transmitted through mosquito bites. Symptoms include fever, headache, and vomiting, and in severe cases, seizures and coma. The World Health Organization reports that there were 228 million cases and 405,000 deaths in 2018, with Africa representing 93% of total cases and 94% of total deaths. Rapid diagnosis and subsequent treatment are the most effective means to mitigate the progression into serious symptoms. However, many fatal cases have been attributed to poor access to healthcare resources for malaria screenings. In these low-resource settings, the use of light microscopy on a thin blood smear with Giemsa stain is used to examine the severity of infection, requiring tedious and manual counting by a trained technician. To address the malaria endemic in Africa and its coexisting socioeconomic constraints, we propose an automated, mobile phone-based screening process that takes advantage of already existing resources. Through the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), we utilize a SSD multibox object detection architecture that rapidly processes thin blood smears acquired via light microscopy to isolate images of individual red blood cells with 90.4% average precision. Then we implement a FSRCNN model that upscales 32 × 32 low-resolution images to 128 × 128 high-resolution images with a PSNR of 30.2, compared to a baseline PSNR of 24.2 through traditional bicubic interpolation. Lastly, we utilize a modified VGG16 CNN that classifies red blood cells as either infected or uninfected with an accuracy of 96.5% in a balanced class dataset. These sequential models create a streamlined screening platform, giving the healthcare provider the number of malaria-infected red blood cells in a given sample. Our deep learning platform is efficient enough to operate exclusively on low-tier smartphone hardware, eliminating the need for high-speed internet connection.
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spelling pubmed-74130782020-08-21 Convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries Zhao, Oliver S. Kolluri, Nikhil Anand, Anagata Chu, Nicholas Bhavaraju, Ravali Ojha, Aditya Tiku, Sandhya Nguyen, Dat Chen, Ryan Morales, Adriane Valliappan, Deepti Patel, Juhi P. Nguyen, Kevin PeerJ Bioengineering Malaria is an infectious disease caused by Plasmodium parasites, transmitted through mosquito bites. Symptoms include fever, headache, and vomiting, and in severe cases, seizures and coma. The World Health Organization reports that there were 228 million cases and 405,000 deaths in 2018, with Africa representing 93% of total cases and 94% of total deaths. Rapid diagnosis and subsequent treatment are the most effective means to mitigate the progression into serious symptoms. However, many fatal cases have been attributed to poor access to healthcare resources for malaria screenings. In these low-resource settings, the use of light microscopy on a thin blood smear with Giemsa stain is used to examine the severity of infection, requiring tedious and manual counting by a trained technician. To address the malaria endemic in Africa and its coexisting socioeconomic constraints, we propose an automated, mobile phone-based screening process that takes advantage of already existing resources. Through the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), we utilize a SSD multibox object detection architecture that rapidly processes thin blood smears acquired via light microscopy to isolate images of individual red blood cells with 90.4% average precision. Then we implement a FSRCNN model that upscales 32 × 32 low-resolution images to 128 × 128 high-resolution images with a PSNR of 30.2, compared to a baseline PSNR of 24.2 through traditional bicubic interpolation. Lastly, we utilize a modified VGG16 CNN that classifies red blood cells as either infected or uninfected with an accuracy of 96.5% in a balanced class dataset. These sequential models create a streamlined screening platform, giving the healthcare provider the number of malaria-infected red blood cells in a given sample. Our deep learning platform is efficient enough to operate exclusively on low-tier smartphone hardware, eliminating the need for high-speed internet connection. PeerJ Inc. 2020-08-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7413078/ /pubmed/32832279 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9674 Text en ©2020 Zhao et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Bioengineering
Zhao, Oliver S.
Kolluri, Nikhil
Anand, Anagata
Chu, Nicholas
Bhavaraju, Ravali
Ojha, Aditya
Tiku, Sandhya
Nguyen, Dat
Chen, Ryan
Morales, Adriane
Valliappan, Deepti
Patel, Juhi P.
Nguyen, Kevin
Convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries
title Convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries
title_full Convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries
title_fullStr Convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries
title_full_unstemmed Convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries
title_short Convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries
title_sort convolutional neural networks to automate the screening of malaria in low-resource countries
topic Bioengineering
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7413078/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32832279
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.9674
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