Chest X-ray images are notoriously difficult to analyze due to the noisy nature. Automatic identification of pneumonia on medical images has attracted intensive study recently. In this paper, a novel joint-task architecture that can learn pneumonia classification and segmentation simultaneously is presented. Two modules, including an image preprocessing module and an attention module, are developed to improve both the classification and segmentation accuracies. Results from the experiments performed on the massive dataset of the Radiology Society of North America have confirmed its superiority over the other existing methods. The classification test accuracy is improved from 0.89 to 0.95, and the segmentation model achieves an improved mean precision result of 0.58–0.78. Finally, two weakly supervised learning methods, class-saliency map and Grad-CAM, are used to highlight the corresponding pixels or areas which have significant influence on the classification model, such that the refined segmentation can focus on the correct areas with high confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of International Journal of Pattern Recognition & Artificial Intelligence is the property of World Scientific Publishing Company and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)