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23 May 2019 Deep Learning Algorithms Improve Automated Identification of Chagas Disease Vectors
Ali Khalighifar, Ed Komp, Janine M. Ramsey, Rodrigo Gurgel-Gonçalves, A. Townsend Peterson
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Abstract

Vector-borne Chagas disease is endemic to the Americas and imposes significant economic and social burdens on public health. In a previous contribution, we presented an automated identification system that was able to discriminate among 12 Mexican and 39 Brazilian triatomine (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) species from digital images. To explore the same data more deeply using machine-learning approaches, hoping for improvements in classification, we employed TensorFlow, an open-source software platform for a deep learning algorithm. We trained the algorithm based on 405 images for Mexican triatomine species and 1,584 images for Brazilian triatomine species. Our system achieved 83.0 and 86.7% correct identification rates across all Mexican and Brazilian species, respectively, an improvement over comparable rates from statistical classifiers (80.3 and 83.9%, respectively). Incorporating distributional information to reduce numbers of species in analyses improved identification rates to 95.8% for Mexican species and 98.9% for Brazilian species. Given the ‘taxonomic impediment’ and difficulties in providing entomological expertise necessary to control such diseases, automating the identification process offers a potential partial solution to crucial challenges.

© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Ali Khalighifar, Ed Komp, Janine M. Ramsey, Rodrigo Gurgel-Gonçalves, and A. Townsend Peterson "Deep Learning Algorithms Improve Automated Identification of Chagas Disease Vectors," Journal of Medical Entomology 56(5), 1404-1410, (23 May 2019). https://doi.org/10.1093/jme/tjz065
Received: 29 November 2018; Accepted: 30 March 2019; Published: 23 May 2019
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KEYWORDS
automated species identification
Chagas disease
deep learning
TensorFlow
Triatominae
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