DenseCapsNet: Detection of COVID-19 X-ray Images Using a Capsule Network

Abstract Objective: A deep learning framework for detecting COVID-19 is developed, and a small amount of chest X-ray data is used to accurately screen COVID-19.Methods: In this paper, we propose a deep learning framework that integrates convolution neural network and capsule network. DenseNet and CapsNet fusion are used to give full play to their respective advantages, reduce the dependence of convolution neural network on a large amount of data, and can quickly and accurately distinguish COVID-19 from Non-COVID-19 through chest X-ray imaging.Results: A total of 1472 chest X-ray COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 images are used, this method can achieve an accuracy of 99.32% and a precision of 100%, with 98.55% sensitivity and 100% specificity.Conclusion: These results show that the deep fusion neural network DenseCapsNet has good performance in novel coronavirus pneumonia X-ray detection. We also prove through experiments that the detection performance of DenseCapsNet is not affected fundamentally by a lack of data augmentation and pre-training.