Evolving deep convolutional neural networks by IP-based marine predator algorithm for COVID-19 diagnosis using chest CT scans

This paper proposes an optimal structured deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) based on the marine predator algorithm (MPA) to construct a novel automatic diagnosis platform that may help radiologists identify COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients based on CT scan categorization and analysis. The goal is met with the help of three modifications based on the regular MPA. First, a novel encoding scheme based on Internet Protocol (IP) addresses is proposed, followed by introducing an Enfeebled layer to build a variable-length DCNN. Finally, the learning process divides big datasets into smaller chunks that are randomly evaluated. The proposed model is compared to the COVID-CT and SARS-CoV-2 datasets to undertake a complete evaluation. Following that, the performance of the developed model (DCNN-IPMPA) is compared to that of a typical DCNN and seven variable-length models using five well-known comparison metrics, as well as the receiver operating characteristic and precision-recall curves. The results show that the DCNN-IPMPA outperforms other benchmarks, with a final accuracy of 97.21% on the SARS-CoV-2 dataset and 97.94% on the COVID-CT dataset. Also, timing analysis indicates that the DCNN processing time is the best among all benchmarks as expected; however, DCNN-IPMPA represents a competitive result compared to the standard DCNN.