Pneumonia Detection on X-Ray Imaging using Softmax Output in Multilevel Meta Ensemble Algorithm of Deep Convolutional Neural Network Transfer Learning Models

Abstract

Pneumonia is the leading cause of death from a single infection worldwide in children. A proven clinical method for diagnosing pneumonia is through a chest X-ray. However, the resulting X-ray images often need clarification, resulting in subjective judgments. In addition, the process of diagnosis requires a longer time. One technique can be applied by applying advanced deep learning, namely, Transfer Learning with Deep Convolutional Neural Network (Deep CNN) and modified Multilevel Meta Ensemble Learning using Softmax. The purpose of this research was to improve the accuracy of the pneumonia classification model. This study proposes a classification model with a meta-ensemble approach using five classification algorithms: Xception, Resnet 15V2, InceptionV3, VGG16, and VGG19. The ensemble stage used two different concepts, where the first level ensemble combined the output of the Xception, ResNet15V2, and InceptionV3 algorithms. Then the output from the first ensemble level is reused for the following learning process, combined with the output from other algorithms, namely VGG16 and VGG19. This process is called ensemble level two. The classification algorithm used at this stage is the same as the previous stage, using KNN as a classification model. Based on experiments, the model proposed in this study has better accuracy than the others, with a test accuracy value of 98.272%. The benefit of this research could help doctors as a recommendation tool to make more accurate and timely diagnoses, thus speeding up the treatment process and reducing the risk of complications.