Discriminative Learning Approach Based on Flexible Mixture Model for Medical Data Categorization and Recognition

In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid discriminative learning approach based on shifted-scaled Dirichlet mixture model (SSDMM) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) to address some challenging problems of medical data categorization and recognition. The main goal is to capture accurately the intrinsic nature of biomedical images by considering the desirable properties of both generative and discriminative models. To achieve this objective, we propose to derive new data-based SVM kernels generated from the developed mixture model SSDMM. The proposed approach includes the following steps: the extraction of robust local descriptors, the learning of the developed mixture model via the expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm, and finally the building of three SVM kernels for data categorization and classification. The potential of the implemented framework is illustrated through two challenging problems that concern the categorization of retinal images into normal or diabetic cases and the recognition of lung diseases in chest X-rays (CXR) images. The obtained results demonstrate the merits of our hybrid approach as compared to other methods.

Bayesian Learning of Shifted-Scaled Dirichlet Mixture Models and Its Application to Early COVID-19 Detection in Chest X-ray Images

Early diagnosis and assessment of fatal diseases and acute infections on chest X-ray (CXR) imaging may have important therapeutic implications and reduce mortality. In fact, many respiratory diseases have a serious impact on the health and lives of people. However, certain types of infections may include high variations in terms of contrast, size and shape which impose a real challenge on classification process. This paper introduces a new statistical framework to discriminate patients who are either negative or positive for certain kinds of virus and pneumonia. We tackle the current problem via a fully Bayesian approach based on a flexible statistical model named shifted-scaled Dirichlet mixture models (SSDMM). This mixture model is encouraged by its effectiveness and robustness recently obtained in various image processing applications. Unlike frequentist learning methods, our developed Bayesian framework has the advantage of taking into account the uncertainty to accurately estimate the model parameters as well as the ability to solve the problem of overfitting. We investigate here a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimator, which is a computer–driven sampling method, for learning the developed model. The current work shows excellent results when dealing with the challenging problem of biomedical image classification. Indeed, extensive experiments have been carried out on real datasets and the results prove the merits of our Bayesian framework.