A Brief Analysis of Multimodal Medical Image Fusion Techniques

Recently, image fusion has become one of the most promising fields in image processing since it plays an essential role in different applications, such as medical diagnosis and clarification of medical images. Multimodal Medical Image Fusion (MMIF) enhances the quality of medical images by combining two or more medical images from different modalities to obtain an improved fused image that is clearer than the original ones. Choosing the best MMIF technique which produces the best quality is one of the important problems in the assessment of image fusion techniques. In this paper, a complete survey on MMIF techniques is presented, along with medical imaging modalities, medical image fusion steps and levels, and the assessment methodology of MMIF. There are several image modalities, such as Computed Tomography (CT), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT). Medical image fusion techniques are categorized into six main categories: spatial domain, transform fusion, fuzzy logic, morphological methods, and sparse representation methods. The MMIF levels are pixel-level, feature-level, and decision-level. The fusion quality evaluation metrics can be categorized as subjective/qualitative and objective/quantitative assessment methods. Furthermore, a detailed comparison between obtained results for significant MMIF techniques is also presented to highlight the pros and cons of each fusion technique

An optimized hybrid deep learning model based on word embeddings and statistical features for extractive summarization

Extractive summarization has recently gained significant attention as a classification problem at the sentence level. Most current summarization methods rely on only one way of representing sentences in a document (i.e., extracted features, word embeddings, BERT embeddings). However, classification performance and summary generation quality will be improved if we combine two ways of representing sentences. This paper presents a novel extractive text summarization method based on word embeddings and statistical features of a single document. Each sentence is encoded using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and a Feed-Forward Neural Network (FFNN) based on word embeddings and statistical features. CNN and FFNN outputs are concatenated to classify the sentence using a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). In addition, hybrid model parameters are optimized by the KerasTuner optimization technique to determine the most efficient hybrid model. The proposed method was evaluated on the standard Newsroom dataset. Experiments show that the proposed method effectively captures the document’s semantic and statistical information and outperforms deep learning, machine learning, and state-of-the-art approaches with scores of 78.64, 74.05, and 72.08 for ROUGE-1 ROUGE-2, and ROUGE-L, respectively

Heart disease risk factors detection from electronic health records using advanced NLP and deep learning techniques

Abstract Heart disease remains the major cause of death, despite recent improvements in prediction and prevention. Risk factor identification is the main step in diagnosing and preventing heart disease. Automatically detecting risk factors for heart disease in clinical notes can help with disease progression modeling and clinical decision-making. Many studies have attempted to detect risk factors for heart disease, but none have identified all risk factors. These studies have proposed hybrid systems that combine knowledge-driven and data-driven techniques, based on dictionaries, rules, and machine learning methods that require significant human effort. The National Center for Informatics for Integrating Biology and Beyond (i2b2) proposed a clinical natural language processing (NLP) challenge in 2014, with a track (track2) focused on detecting risk factors for heart disease risk factors in clinical notes over time. Clinical narratives provide a wealth of information that can be extracted using NLP and Deep Learning techniques. The objective of this paper is to improve on previous work in this area as part of the 2014 i2b2 challenge by identifying tags and attributes relevant to disease diagnosis, risk factors, and medications by providing advanced techniques of using stacked word embeddings. The i2b2 heart disease risk factors challenge dataset has shown significant improvement by using the approach of stacking embeddings, which combines various embeddings. Our model achieved an F1 score of 93.66% by using BERT and character embeddings (CHARACTER-BERT Embedding) stacking. The proposed model has significant results compared to all other models and systems that we developed for the 2014 i2b2 challenge

Adapting transformer-based language models for heart disease detection and risk factors extraction

Abstract Efficiently treating cardiac patients before the onset of a heart attack relies on the precise prediction of heart disease. Identifying and detecting the risk factors for heart disease such as diabetes mellitus, Coronary Artery Disease (CAD), hyperlipidemia, hypertension, smoking, familial CAD history, obesity, and medications is critical for developing effective preventative and management measures. Although Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have emerged as valuable resources for identifying these risk factors, their unstructured format poses challenges for cardiologists in retrieving relevant information. This research proposed employing transfer learning techniques to automatically extract heart disease risk factors from EHRs. Leveraging transfer learning, a deep learning technique has demonstrated a significant performance in various clinical natural language processing (NLP) applications, particularly in heart disease risk prediction. This study explored the application of transformer-based language models, specifically utilizing pre-trained architectures like BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), RoBERTa, BioClinicalBERT, XLNet, and BioBERT for heart disease detection and extraction of related risk factors from clinical notes, using the i2b2 dataset. These transformer models are pre-trained on an extensive corpus of medical literature and clinical records to gain a deep understanding of contextualized language representations. Adapted models are then fine-tuned using annotated datasets specific to heart disease, such as the i2b2 dataset, enabling them to learn patterns and relationships within the domain. These models have demonstrated superior performance in extracting semantic information from EHRs, automating high-performance heart disease risk factor identification, and performing downstream NLP tasks within the clinical domain. This study proposed fine-tuned five widely used transformer-based models, namely BERT, RoBERTa, BioClinicalBERT, XLNet, and BioBERT, using the 2014 i2b2 clinical NLP challenge dataset. The fine-tuned models surpass conventional approaches in predicting the presence of heart disease risk factors with impressive accuracy. The RoBERTa model has achieved the highest performance, with micro F1-scores of 94.27%, while the BERT, BioClinicalBERT, XLNet, and BioBERT models have provided competitive performances with micro F1-scores of 93.73%, 94.03%, 93.97%, and 93.99%, respectively. Finally, a simple ensemble of the five transformer-based models has been proposed, which outperformed the most existing methods in heart disease risk fan, achieving a micro F1-Score of 94.26%. This study demonstrated the efficacy of transfer learning using transformer-based models in enhancing risk prediction and facilitating early intervention for heart disease prevention

A Robust and Efficient System to Detect Human Faces Based on Facial Features

Face detection is considered as a one of the most important issues in the identification and authentication systems which use biometric features. Face detection is not straightforward as long as it has lots of dissimilarity of image appearance. Some challenges are required to be resolved to improve the detection process. These challenges include environmental constraints, device specific constraints and the facial feature constraints. Here in our paper we present a modified method to enrich face detection by using combination of Haar cascade files using skin detection, eye detection and nose detection. Our proposed system has been evaluated using Wild database. The experimental results have shown that the proposed system can achieve accuracy of detection up to 96%. Also, here we compared the proposed system with the other face detection systems and the success rate of the proposed system is better than the considered systems

An Efficient Snort NIDSaaS based on Danger Theory and Machine Learning

Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) is a hardware or software application that allows computer networks to detect, recognize and avoid the harmful activities, which attempt to compromise the integrity, privacy or accessibility of computer network. Two detection techniques are used by the NIDSs, namely, the signature-based and anomaly-based. Signature-based intrusion detection depends on the detection of the signature of the known attacks. On the other hand, the anomaly-based intrusion detection depends on the detection of anomalous behaviours in the networks. Snort is an open source signature-based NIDS and can be used effectively to detect and prevent the known network attacks. It uses a set of predefined signatures (rules) to trigger an alert if any network packet matches one of its rules. However, it fails to detect new attacks that do not have signatures in its predefined rules. Thus, it requires constant update of its rules to detect new attacks. To overcome this deficiency, the present paper recommends using Danger Theory concepts inspired from biological immune system with a machine learning algorithm to automatically create new Snort rules, which can detect new attacks. Snort NIDS as a software as a Service (NIDSaaS) in cloud computing has been suggested. Experimental results showed that the proposed modifications of the Snort improved its ability to detect the new attacks

A New Chaotic-Based RGB Image Encryption Technique Using a Nonlinear Rotational 16 × 16 DNA Playfair Matrix

Due to great interest in the secure storage and transmission of color images, the necessity for an efficient and robust RGB image encryption technique has grown. RGB image encryption ensures the confidentiality of color images during storage and transmission. In the literature, a large number of chaotic-based image encryption techniques have been proposed, but there is still a need for a robust, efficient and secure technique against different kinds of attacks. In this paper, a novel RGB image encryption technique is proposed for encrypting individual pixels of RGB images using chaotic systems and 16 rounds of DNA encoding, transpositions and substitutions. First, round keys are generated randomly using a logistic chaotic function. Then, these keys are used across different rounds to alter individual pixels using a nonlinear randomly generated 16×16 DNA Playfair matrix. Experimental results show the robustness of the proposed technique against most attacks while reducing the consumed time for encryption and decryption. The quantitative metrics show the ability of the proposed technique to maintain reference evaluation values while resisting statistical and differential attacks. The obtained horizontal, vertical and diagonal correlation is less than 0.01, and the NPCR and UACI are larger than 0.99 and 0.33, respectively. Finally, NIST analysis is presented to evaluate the randomness of the proposed technique

Multiple Strategies Boosted Orca Predation Algorithm for Engineering Optimization Problems

Abstract This paper proposes an enhanced orca predation algorithm (OPA) called the Lévy flight orca predation algorithm (LFOPA). LFOPA improves OPA by integrating the Lévy flight (LF) strategy into the chasing phase of OPA and employing the greedy selection (GS) strategy at the end of each optimization iteration. This enhancement is made to avoid the entrapment of local optima and to improve the quality of acquired solutions. OPA is a novel, efficient population-based optimizer that surpasses other reliable optimizers. However, owing to the low diversity of orcas, OPA is prone to stalling at local optima in some scenarios. In this paper, LFOPA is proposed for addressing global and real-world optimization challenges. To investigate the validity of the proposed LFOPA, it is compared with seven robust optimizers, including the improved multi-operator differential evolution algorithm (IMODE), covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES), gravitational search algorithm (GSA), grey wolf optimizer (GWO), moth-flame optimization algorithm (MFO), Harris hawks optimization (HHO), and the original OPA on 10 unconstrained test functions linked to 2020 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC’20). Furthermore, four different design engineering issues, including the welded beam, the tension/compression spring, the pressure vessel, and the speed reducer, are solved using the proposed LFOPA, to test its applicability. It was also employed to address node localization challenges in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) as an example of real-world applications. Results and tests of significance show that the proposed LFOPA performs much better than OPA and other competitors. LFOPA simulation results on node localization challenges are much superior to other competitors in terms of minimizing squared errors and localization errors

Metaheuristic algorithms and their applications in wireless sensor networks: review, open issues, and challenges

Metaheuristic algorithms have wide applicability, particularly in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), due to their superior skill in solving and optimizing many issues in different domains. However, WSNs suffer from several issues, such as deployment, localization, sink node placement, energy efficiency, and clustering. Unfortunately, these issues negatively affect the already limited energy of the WSNs; therefore, the need to employ metaheuristic algorithms is inevitable to alleviate the harm imposed by these issues on the lifespan and performance of the network. Some associated issues regarding WSNs are modelled as single and multi-objective optimization issues. Single-objective issues have one optimal solution, and the other has multiple desirable solutions that compete, the so-called non-dominated solutions. Several optimization strategies based on metaheuristic algorithms are available to address various types of optimization concerns relating to WSN deployment, localization, sink node placement, energy efficiency, and clustering. This review reports and discusses the literature research on single and multi-objective metaheuristics and their evaluation criteria, WSN architectures and definitions, and applications of metaheuristics in WSN deployment, localization, sink node placement, energy efficiency, and clustering. It also proposes definitions for these terms and reports on some ongoing difficulties linked to these topics. Furthermore, this review outlines the open issues, challenge paths, and future trends that can be applied to metaheuristic algorithms (single and multi-objective) and WSN difficulties, as well as the significant efforts that are necessary to improve WSN efficiency.publishedVersio

Predicting Coronavirus Pandemic in Real-Time Using Machine Learning and Big Data Streaming System

Twitter is a virtual social network where people share their posts and opinions about the current situation, such as the coronavirus pandemic. It is considered the most significant streaming data source for machine learning research in terms of analysis, prediction, knowledge extraction, and opinions. Sentiment analysis is a text analysis method that has gained further significance due to social networks’ emergence. Therefore, this paper introduces a real-time system for sentiment prediction on Twitter streaming data for tweets about the coronavirus pandemic. The proposed system aims to find the optimal machine learning model that obtains the best performance for coronavirus sentiment analysis prediction and then uses it in real-time. The proposed system has been developed into two components: developing an offline sentiment analysis and modeling an online prediction pipeline. The system has two components: the offline and the online components. For the offline component of the system, the historical tweets’ dataset was collected in duration 23/01/2020 and 01/06/2020 and filtered by #COVID-19 and #Coronavirus hashtags. Two feature extraction methods of textual data analysis were used, n-gram and TF-ID, to extract the dataset’s essential features, collected using coronavirus hashtags. Then, five regular machine learning algorithms were performed and compared: decision tree, logistic regression, k-nearest neighbors, random forest, and support vector machine to select the best model for the online prediction component. The online prediction pipeline was developed using Twitter Streaming API, Apache Kafka, and Apache Spark. The experimental results indicate that the RF model using the unigram feature extraction method has achieved the best performance, and it is used for sentiment prediction on Twitter streaming data for coronavirus