COVIDGR dataset and COVID-SDNet methodology for predicting COVID-19 based on Chest X-Ray images

Currently, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), one of the most infectious diseases in the 21st century, is diagnosed using RT-PCR testing, CT scans and/or Chest X-Ray (CXR) images. CT (Computed Tomography) scanners and RT-PCR testing are not available in most medical centers and hence in many cases CXR images become the most time/cost effective tool for assisting clinicians in making decisions. Deep learning neural networks have a great potential for building triage systems for detecting COVID-19 patients, especially patients with low severity. Unfortunately, current databases do not allow building such systems as they are highly heterogeneous and biased towards severe cases. This paper is three-fold: (i) we demystify the high sensitivities achieved by most recent COVID-19 classification models, (ii) under a close collaboration with Hospital Universitario Cl\'inico San Cecilio, Granada, Spain, we built COVIDGR-1.0, a homogeneous and balanced database that includes all levels of severity, from Normal with positive RT-PCR, Mild, Moderate to Severe. COVIDGR-1.0 contains 377 positive and 377 negative PA (PosteroAnterior) CXR views and (iii) we propose COVID Smart Data based Network (COVID-SDNet) methodology for improving the generalization capacity of COVID-classification models. Our approach reaches good and stable results with an accuracy of $97.37\% \pm 1.86 \%$, $88.14\% \pm 2.02\%$, $66.5\% \pm 8.04\%$ in severe, moderate and mild COVID severity levels. Our approach could help in the early detection of COVID-19. COVIDGR-1.0 dataset will be made available after the review process.

A tutorial on ensembles and deep learning fusion with MNIST as guiding thread: A complex heterogeneous fusion scheme reaching 10 digits error

Ensemble methods have been widely used for improving the results of the best single classification model. Indeed, a large body of works have achieved better results mainly by applying one specific ensemble method. However, very few works analyze complex fusion schemes using heterogeneous ensemble strategies. This paper is three-fold: 1) It provides a tutorial of the most popular ensemble methods, 2) analyzes the best ensembles using MNIST as guiding thread and 3) shows that complex fusion architectures based on heterogeneous ensembles can be considered as a mode of taking benefit from diversity. We introduce a complex fusion design that achieves a new record in MNIST with only 10 misclassified images.