Unlocking Pneumonia Severity Diagnosis with Deep Learning

Abstract

Pneumonia is a form of acute respiratory infection that affects the lungs. The lungs are made up of small sacs called alveoli, which is normally fill with air in a healthy person, but filled with pus and fluid in an individual with pneumonia thereby reduces oxygen intake and making breathing difficult Pneumonia is a fatal and leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, especially among children five years and below; and the elderly 65 years and above especially those with weakened immune systems. Pneumonia can be caused by bacteria, virus, and fungi, and the severity ranges from mild to severe depending on the causative agent and the duration of the infection. Early diagnosis, particularly knowing the severity level of Pneumonia gains a paramount importance for saving lives. Medical diagnosis using artificial intelligence (AI) systems, is currently an active research area in medicine widely used in biomedical systems. Deep learning, a subset of Artificial intelligence provides a powerful tool that assist medical experts to analyze, model, and make sense of complex clinical image data across a broad range of medical applications. This paper proposes a deep learning technique of classifying X-ray images of pneumonia patients into their severity classes.