Classification of Medical Thermograms using Transfer Learning

Abstract

Thermal imaging has been used for decades to monitor the health status of neonates as an non-invasive and non-ionizing imaging technique. Applications such as thermal asymmetry and disease analysis can be performed by applying deep learning methods to thermal imaging technique. However, thousands of different images are needed to perform analyzes with deep learning methods. It takes many years to create data sets with thousands of different images due to feeding time, medication time and instant baby care in the neonatal intensive care unit. In this study, a unhealthy-healthy classification was performed using thermal images obtained from the Selcuk University, Faculty of Medicine, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for one year. Transfer learning method has been used to overcome the lack of data problem. When VGG16 model was used for transfer learning, the results were obtained as 100% sensitivity and 94.73% specificity. This result shows that thermal imaging and transfer learning method can be used in early diagnosis of diseases.