Multi-Label Classification of Thoracic Diseases using Dense Convolutional Network on Chest Radiographs

Chest X-ray images are one of the most common medical diagnosis techniques to identify different thoracic diseases. However, identification of pathologies in X-ray images requires skilled manpower and are often cited as a time-consuming task with varied level of interpretation, particularly in cases where the identification of disease only by images is difficult for human eyes. With recent achievements of deep learning in image classification, its application in disease diagnosis has been widely explored. This research project presents a multi-label disease diagnosis model of chest x-rays. Using Dense Convolutional Neural Network (DenseNet), the diagnosis system was able to obtain high classification predictions. The model obtained the highest AUC score of 0.896 for condition Cardiomegaly and the lowest AUC score for Nodule, 0.655. The model also localized the parts of the chest radiograph that indicated the presence of each pathology using GRADCAM, thus contributing to the model interpretability of a deep learning algorithm.