Alzheimer's disease detection using depthwise separable convolutional neural networks

To diagnose Alzheimer's disease (AD), neuroimaging methods such as magnetic resonance imaging have been employed. Recent progress in computer vision with deep learning (DL) has further inspired research focused on machine learning algorithms. However, a few limitations of these algorithms, such as the requirement for large number of training images and the necessity for powerful computers, still hinder the extensive usage of AD diagnosis based on machine learning. In addition, large number of training parameters and heavy computation make the DL systems difficult in integrating with mobile embedded devices, for example the mobile phones. For AD detection using DL, most of the current research solely focused on improving the classification performance, while few studies have been done to obtain a more compact model with less complexity and relatively high recognition accuracy. In order to solve this problem and improve the efficiency of the DL algorithm, a deep separable convolutional neural network model is proposed for AD classification in this paper. The depthwise separable convolution (DSC) is used in this work to replace the conventional convolution. Compared to the traditional neural networks, the parameters and computing cost of the proposed neural network are found greatly reduced. The parameters and computational costs of the proposed neural network are found to be significantly reduced compared with conventional neural networks. With its low power consumption, the proposed model is particularly suitable for embedding mobile devices. Experimental findings show that the DSC algorithm, based on the OASIS magnetic resonance imaging dataset, is very successful for AD detection. Moreover, transfer learning is employed in this work to improve model performance. Two trained models with complex networks, namely AlexNet and GoogLeNet, are used for transfer learning, with average classification rates of 91.40%, 93.02% and a less power consumption.