A Comparison of Convolutional Neural Networks and Traditional Feature-Based Classification Applied to Leukaemia Image...

The accuracy of smear test image classification is a fundamental aspect in differentiating the type of leukaemia and determining the right treatment to improve the patient's chances of survival and recovery. Image Classification has lately become a very effective tool in detecting and analysing the right type of leukaemia as each type of the disease looks differently when evaluated under microscope. This paper is evaluating and comparing the efficiency and performance of feature extraction techniques (colour descriptors and Haralick texture descriptors) and a CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) built and trained by using the TensorFlow packages for classifying leukaemia images. Extracting texture and colour features from a given set of leukaemia images through computation was successful in detecting the type of disease and the results analysed with Weka Classifiers were giving the highest accuracy of 93.58%. TensorFlow tested with Cross-Validation proves efficient in training and customising the system, but the accuracy was median 56% and was not greatly improved by addressing the class imbalance issue from the data set with SMOTE. Further studies will investigate increasing the number of images by using a segmentation and image manipulation/augmentation techniques and increasing the accuracy of CNN through the addition of the investigated traditional features.