Rapid and Precise Identification of COVID-19 through Segmentation and Classification of CT and X-ray Images

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by a novel coronavirus, has become a global epidemic. Although the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test is the current gold standard for detecting the virus, its low reliability has led to the use of CT and X-ray imaging in diagnostics. As limited vaccine availability necessitates rapid and accurate detection, this study applies k-means and fuzzy c-means segmentation to CT and X-ray images to classify COVID-19 cases as either diseased or healthy for CT scans and diseased, healthy, or non-COVID pneumonia for X-rays. Our research employs four open-access, widely-used datasets and is conducted in four stages: preprocessing, segmentation, feature extraction, and classification. During feature extraction, we employ the Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM), Local Binary Pattern (LBP), and Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG). In the classification process, our approach involves utilizing k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN), Support Vector Machines (SVM), and Extreme Learning Machines (ELM) techniques. Our research achieved a sensitivity rate exceeding 99%, which is higher than the 60-70% sensitivity rate of PCR tests. As a result, our study can serve as a decision support system that can help medical professionals make rapid and precise diagnoses with a high level of sensitivity.