Pneumonia causes the death of around 700,000 children every year and affects 7% of the global population. Chest X-rays are primarily used for the diagnosis of this disease. However, even for a trained radiologist, it is a challenging task to examine chest X-rays. There is a need to improve the diagnosis accuracy. In this work, an efficient model for the detection of pneumonia trained on digital chest X-ray images is proposed, which could aid the radiologists in their decision making process. A novel approach based on a weighted classifier is introduced, which combines the weighted predictions from the state-of-the-art deep learning models such as ResNet18, Xception, InceptionV3, DenseNet121, and MobileNetV3 in an optimal way. This approach is a supervised learning approach in which the network predicts the result based on the quality of the dataset used. Transfer learning is used to fine-tune the deep learning models to obtain higher training and validation accuracy. Partial data augmentation techniques are employed to increase the training dataset in a balanced way. The proposed weighted classifier is able to outperform all the individual models. Finally, the model is evaluated, not only in terms of test accuracy, but also in the AUC score. The final proposed weighted classifier model is able to achieve a test accuracy of 98.43% and an AUC score of 99.76 on the unseen data from the Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center pneumonia dataset. Hence, the proposed model can be used for a quick diagnosis of pneumonia and can aid the radiologists in the diagnosis process.

The smartphone-based human activity recognition (HAR) systems are not capable to deliver high-end performance for challenging applications. We propose a dedicated hardware-based HAR system for smart military wearables, which uses a multilayer perceptron (MLP) algorithm to perform activity classification. To achieve the flexible and efficient hardware design, the inherent MLP architecture with parallel computation is implemented on FPGA. The system performance has been evaluated using the UCI human activity dataset with 7767 feature samples of 20 subjects. The three combinations of a dataset are trained, validated, and tested on ten different MLP models with distinct topologies. The MLP design with the 7-6-5 topology is finalized from the classification accuracy and cross entropy performance. The five versions of the final MLP design (7-6-5) with different data precision are implemented on FPGA. The analysis shows that the MLP designed with 16-bit fixed-point data precision is the most efficient MLP implementation in the context of classification accuracy, resource utilization, and power consumption. The proposed MLP design requires only 270 ns for classification and consumes 120 mW of power. The recognition accuracy and hardware results performance achieved are better than many of the recently reported works. INDEX TERMS Human activity recognition, multilayer perceptron, smart military wearables, classifier hardware implementation, field programmable gate array.

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Increasing interest, enthusiasm of sport lovers, and economics involved offer high importance to sports video recording and analysis. Being crucial for decision making, ball detection and tracking in soccer has become a challenging research area. This paper presents a novel deep learning approach for 2D ball detection and tracking (DLBT) in soccer videos posing various challenges. A new 2-stage buffer median filtering background modelling is used for moving objects blob detection. A deep learning approach for classification of an image patch into three classes, i.e. ball, player, and background is initially proposed. Probabilistic bounding box overlapping technique is proposed further for robust ball track validation. Novel full and boundary grid concepts resume tracking in ball track lost and ball out of frame situations. DLBT does not require human intervention to identify ball from the initial frames unlike the most published algorithms. DLBT yields extraordinary accurate and robust tracking results compared to the other contemporary 2D trackers even in presence of various challenges including very small ball size and fast movements.

In computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) of mediolateral oblique (MLO) view of mammogram, the accuracy of tissue segmentation highly depends on the exclusion of pectoral muscle. Robust methods for such exclusions are essential as the normal presence of pectoral muscle can bias the decision of CAD. In this paper, a novel texture gradient-based approach for automatic segmentation of pectoral muscle is proposed. The pectoral edge is initially approximated to a straight line by applying Hough transform on Probable Texture Gradient (PTG) map of the mammogram followed by block averaging with the aid of approximated line. Furthermore, a smooth pectoral muscle curve is achieved with proposed Euclidean Distance Regression (EDR) technique and polynomial modeling. The algorithm is robust to texture and overlapping fibro glandular tissues. The method is validated with 340 MLO views from three databases-including 200 randomly selected scanned film images from miniMIAS, 100 computed radiography images and 40 full-field digital mammogram images. Qualitatively, 96.75 % of the pectoral muscles are segmented with an acceptable pectoral score index. The proposed method not only outperforms state-of-the-art approaches but also accurately quantifies the pectoral edge. Thus, its high accuracy and relatively quick processing time clearly justify its suitability for CAD.