Blood cell classification

Project overview

This project using deep learning method to do the classification for the blood smear images. We test and compared three classic classification model here: ResNet, EfficientNet and the AlexNet.

Methods

Dataset

Here is the dataset link: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/paultimothymooney/blood-cells.

The row dataset containing 410 images for 5 classes:

We clean the data by:

1. Delete 10% of the Neutrophil
2. Training the less-amount class multi-time
3. Drop the Basophil class
4. Drop the double class
5. Drop the null class

   

Also, I do the data exploration by drawing the pixel distribution and average images.

Model selection

ResNet

This model solved the degradation problem: As the network became deeper and deeper, the error begin to increase - hard to converge.

• Not caused by overfitting, because the training error is also increase
• Not caused by gradients vanishing/exploding, because this problem has been largely addressed by normalization layers.

Core concept - the residual block

• The target weight is near the identity.
• A identity map adding the block-beginning layer feature to the block-ending layer.
• Solve the degradation problem.

EfficientNet

The author of the EfficientNet firstly using neural architecture search to find the baseline network, which ensures the whole architecture to be smaller and more accurate. And then he proposes a compound scaling method, uniform scale network width, depth and resolution using a composite factor φ. He scaled up the baseline model by this composite factor and come up with the EfficientNet.

To test the robustness of the scaling method, the author applies the scaling method to MobileNets and Resnets, showing that the composite scaling method improves the accuracy of all these models.

AlexNet

Traditional CNN, just as a control group to evaluate the performance of the EfficientNet and the ResNet.

Results

We evaluate the model by the training loss/accuracy graph, confusion matrix and the statistic information.

The result of the EfficientNet

The statistic information of the EfficientNet:

• The number of right prediction is 32
• The number of total prediction is 35
• The accuracy is 0.914
• For type NEUTROPHIL:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 0.833
  • The specificity is 1.000
  • The precision is 1.000
• For type EOSINOPHIL:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 1.000
  • The specificity is 0.938
  • The precision is 0.600
• For type MONOCYTE:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 0.667
  • The specificity is 1.000
  • The precision is 1.000
• For type LYMPHOCYTE:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 0.957
  • The specificity is 0.917
  • The precision is 0.957

The result of the ResNet

The statistic information of the ResNet:

• The number of right prediction is 28
• The number of total prediction is 35
• The accuracy is 0.800
• For type NEUTROPHIL:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 1.000
  • The specificity is 0.759
  • The precision is 0.462
• For type EOSINOPHIL:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 1.000
  • The specificity is 1.000
  • The precision is 1.000
• For type MONOCYTE:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 1.000
  • The specificity is 1.000
  • The precision is 1.000
• For type LYMPHOCYTE:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 0.696
  • The specificity is 1.000
  • The precision is 1.000

The result of the AlexNet

The statistic information of the AlexNet:

• The number of right prediction is 6
• The number of total prediction is 35
• The accuracy is 0.171
• For type NEUTROPHIL:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 1.000
  • The specificity is 0.000
  • The precision is 0.171
• For type EOSINOPHIL:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 0.000
  • The specificity is 1.000
  • The precision is 0
• For type MONOCYTE:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 0.000
  • The specificity is 1.000
  • The precision is 0
• For type LYMPHOCYTE:
  • The recall/sensitivity is 0.000
  • The specificity is 1.000
  • The precision is 0

Obviously, the AlexNet can’t catch enough feature to make right decision.

Models comparison

Conclusion

In this project, I trained 3 classification models and test their performance. Although the traditional AlexNet can’t extract enough feature to make right decision, the performance of the ResNet and the EfficientNet is pretty good. Especially for the EfficientNet, the accuracy of it reach above 90 percent.