Classification of Malaria Using Object Detection Models

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Informatics

Abstract

Malaria poses a global health problem every day, as it affects millions of lives all over the world. A traditional diagnosis requires the manual inspection of blood smears from the patient under a microscope to check for the malaria parasite. This is often time consuming and subject to error. Thus, the automated detection and classification of the malaria type and stage of progression can provide a quicker and more accurate diagnosis for patients. In this research, we used two object detection models, YOLOv5 and scaled YOLOv4, to classify the stage of progression and type of malaria parasite. We also used two different datasets for the classification of stage and parasite type while assessing the viability of the dataset for the task. The dataset used is comprised of microscopic images of red blood cells that were either parasitized or uninfected. The infected cells were classified based on two broad categories: the type of malarial parasite causing the infection and the stage of progression of the disease. The dataset was manually annotated using the LabelImg tool. The images were then augmented to enhance model training. Both models YOLOv5 and scaled YOLOv4 proved effective in classifying the type of parasite. Scaled YOLOv4 was in the lead with an accuracy of 83% followed by YOLOv5 with an accuracy of 78.5%. The proposed models may be useful for the medical professionals in the accurate diagnosis of malaria and its stage prediction.

DOI

10.3390/informatics9040076

Publication Date

12-1-2022

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