The effectiveness of deep learning vs. traditional methods for lung disease diagnosis using chest X-ray images: A systematic review

Abstract

Recently, deep learning has proven to be a successful technique especially in medical image analysis. This paper aims to highlight the importance of deep learning architectures in lung disease diagnosis using CXR images. Related articles were identified through searches of electronic resources, including IEEE, Springer, Elsevier, PubMed, Nature and, Hindawi digital library. The inclusion of articles was based on high-performance artificial intelligence models, developed for the classification of possible findings in CXR images published from 2018 to 2023.After the quality assessment of papers, 129 articles were included according to PRISMA guidelines. Papers were studied by types of lung disease, data source, algorithm type, and outcome metrics. Three main categories of computer-aided lung disease detection were covered: traditional machine learning, deep learning-based methods, and combination of aforementioned methods for all lung diseases.The results showed that various pre-trained networks including ResNet, VGG, and DenseNet, are the most frequently used CNN architectures and would result in a notable increase in sensitivity and accuracy. Recent research suggests that utilizing a combination of deep networks with a robust machine learning classifier can outperform deep learning approaches that rely solely on fully connected neural networks as their classifier. Finally, the limitations of the existing literature and potential future research opportunities in possible findings in CXR images using deep learning architectures are discussed in this systematic review.