Sparse-FCM and Deep Convolutional Neural Network for the segmentation and classification of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Leukaemia detection and diagnosis in advance is the trending topic in the medical applications for reducing the death toll of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). For the detection of ALL, it is essential to analyse the white blood cells (WBCs) for which the blood smear images are employed. This paper proposes a new technique for the segmentation and classification of the acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. The proposed method of automatic leukaemia detection is based on the Deep Convolutional Neural Network (Deep CNN) that is trained using an optimization algorithm, named Grey wolf-based Jaya Optimization Algorithm (GreyJOA), which is developed using the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) and Jaya Optimization Algorithm (JOA) that improves the global convergence. Initially, the input image is applied to pre-processing and the segmentation is performed using the Sparse Fuzzy C-Means (Sparse FCM) clustering algorithm. Then, the features, such as Local Directional Patterns (LDP) and colour histogram-based features, are extracted from the segments of the pre-processed input image. Finally, the extracted features are applied to the Deep CNN for the classification. The experimentation evaluation of the method using the images of the ALL IDB2 database reveals that the proposed method acquired a maximal accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of 0.9350, 0.9528, and 0.9389, respectively.