Tuning VGG19 hyperparameters for improved pneumonia classification

Abstract

This research focuses on the classification of chest X-ray (CXR) images using powerful VGG19 convolutional neural network (CNN)architecture. The classification task involves distinguishing between various chest conditions present in X-ray images, with the aim of assisting medical professionals in achieving accurate and efficient diagnoses. This research work explores the use of the VGG19 model for classifying CXR images using three optimization algorithms: Stochastic gradient descent with momentum (SGDM), root mean square propagation (RMSprop), and adaptive moment estimation (Adam). This study investigates the impact of various factors on hyperparameter adjustments, including a learning rate (LR), mini-batch size (MBS) and training epochs. Additionally, two dropout layers are introduced for weight decay with an L2 factor, and data augmentation techniques are applied with various activation functions. This study not only helps optimize for medical image analysis but also offers valuable insights into the comparative efficacy of popular optimization algorithms in deep learning (DL) applications