Deep Learning Algorithms for Early Diagnosis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a form of blood cancer that affects the white blood cells. ALL constitutes approximately 25% of pediatric cancers. Early diagnosis and treatment of ALL are crucial for improving patient outcomes. The task of identifying immature leukemic blasts from normal cells under the microscope can prove challenging, since the images of a healthy and cancerous cell appear similar morphologically. In this study, we propose a binary image classification model to assist in the diagnostic process of ALL. Our model takes as input microscopic images of blood samples and outputs a binary prediction of whether the sample is normal or cancerous. Our dataset consists of 10661 images out of 118 subjects. Deep learning techniques on convolutional neural network architectures were used to achieve accurate classification results. Our proposed method achieved 94.3% accuracy and could be used as an assisting tool for hematologists trying to predict the likelihood of a patient developing ALL.