Deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model optimization techniques—Review for medical imaging

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) has been expanding and is explored by researchers in various fields. In medical diagnosis, for instance, the field of AI/ML is being explored because if medical diagnostic devices are built and designed with a backend of AI/ML, then the benefits would be unprecedented. Automated diagnostic tools would result in reduced health care costs, diagnosis without human intervention, overcoming human errors, and providing adequate and affordable medical care to a wider portion of the population with portions of the actual cost. One domain where AI/ML can make an immediate impact is medical imaging diagnosis (MID), namely the classification of medical images, where researchers have applied optimization techniques aiming to improve image classification accuracy. In this paper, we provide the research community with a comprehensive review of the most relevant studies to date on the use of deep CNN architecture optimization techniques for MID. As a case study, the application of these techniques to COVID-19 medical images were made. The impacts of the related variables, including datasets and AI/ML techniques, were investigated in detail. Additionally, the significant shortcomings and challenges of the techniques were touched upon. We concluded our work by affirming that the application of AI/ML techniques for MID will continue for many years to come, and the performance of the AI/ML classification techniques will continue to increase.