DDA-SSNets: Dual decoder attention-based semantic segmentation networks for COVID-19 infection segmentation and classification using chest X-Ray images.

Background: COVID-19 needs to be diagnosed and staged to be treated accurately. However, prior studies' diagnostic and staging abilities for COVID-19 infection needed to be improved. Therefore, new deep learning-based approaches are required to aid radiologists in detecting and quantifying COVID-19-related lung infections.

Objective: To develop deep learning-based models to classify and quantify COVID-19-related lung infections.

Methods: Initially, Dual Decoder Attention-based Semantic Segmentation Networks (DDA-SSNets) such as Dual Decoder Attention-UNet (DDA-UNet) and Dual Decoder Attention-SegNet (DDA-SegNet) are proposed to facilitate the dual segmentation tasks such as lung lobes and infection segmentation in chest X-ray (CXR) images. The lung lobe and infection segmentations are mapped to grade the severity of COVID-19 infection in both the lungs of CXRs. Later, a Genetic algorithm-based Deep Convolutional Neural Network classifier with the optimum number of layers, namely GADCNet, is proposed to classify the extracted regions of interest (ROI) from the CXR lung lobes into COVID-19 and non-COVID-19.

Results: The DDA-SegNet shows better segmentation with an average BCSSDC of 99.53% and 99.97% for lung lobes and infection segmentations, respectively, compared with DDA-UNet with an average BCSSDC of 99.14% and 99.92%. The proposed DDA-SegNet with GADCNet classifier offered excellent classification results with an average BCCAC of 99.98%, followed by the GADCNet with DDA-UNet with an average BCCAC of 99.92% after extensive testing and analysis.

Conclusions: The results show that the proposed DDA-SegNet has superior performance in the segmentation of lung lobes and COVID-19-infected regions in CXRs, along with improved severity grading compared to the DDA-UNet and improved accuracy of the GADCNet classifier in classifying the CXRs into COVID-19, and non-COVID-19.