Fusion of convolution neural network, support vector machine and Sobel filter for accurate detection of COVID-19 patients using X-ray images

• Published in: Biomedical signal processing and control 2021-07, Vol.68, p.102622-102622, Article 102622
• Main Authors: Sharifrazi, Danial, Alizadehsani, Roohallah, Roshanzamir, Mohamad, Joloudari, Javad Hassannataj, Shoeibi, Afshin, Jafari, Mahboobeh, Hussain, Sadiq, Sani, Zahra Alizadeh, Hasanzadeh, Fereshteh, Khozeimeh, Fahime, Khosravi, Abbas, Nahavandi, Saeid, Panahiazar, Maryam, Zare, Assef, Islam, Sheikh Mohammed Shariful, Acharya, U. Rajendra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: CNN; Covid-19; Data mining; Deep learning; Feature extraction; Image processing; Machine learning; Sobel operator; SVM
• ISSN: 1746-8094; 1746-8108; 1746-8094
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bspc.2021.102622

•We ourselves collected the data. So, the dataset is new.•Proposed method was tested on six public datasets and the results are better than most of state of the art papers.•We showed that using the Sobel filter can improve the performance of CNN.•We did not use pre-trained networks unlike most of the other researches. We ourselves designed the network.•Our method performance was better than the compared references. The coronavirus (COVID-19) is currently the most common contagious disease which is prevalent all over the world. The main challenge of this disease is the primary diagnosis to prevent secondary infections and its spread from one person to another. Therefore, it is essential to use an automatic diagnosis system along with clinical procedures for the rapid diagnosis of COVID-19 to prevent its spread. Artificial intelligence techniques using computed tomography (CT) images of the lungs and chest radiography have the potential to obtain high diagnostic performance for Covid-19 diagnosis. In this study, a fusion of convolutional neural network (CNN), support vector machine (SVM), and Sobel filter is proposed to detect COVID-19 using X-ray images. A new X-ray image dataset was collected and subjected to high pass filter using a Sobel filter to obtain the edges of the images. Then these images are fed to CNN deep learning model followed by SVM classifier with ten-fold cross validation strategy. This method is designed so that it can learn with not many data. Our results show that the proposed CNN-SVM with Sobel filter (CNN-SVM + Sobel) achieved the highest classification accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 99.02%, 100% and 95.23%, respectively in automated detection of COVID-19. It showed that using Sobel filter can improve the performance of CNN. Unlike most of the other researches, this method does not use a pre-trained network. We have also validated our developed model using six public databases and obtained the highest performance. Hence, our developed model is ready for clinical application.