Optimization of the VGG Deep Learning Model Performance for Covid-19 Detection Using CT-Scan Images

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) causes a pneumonia-like disease known as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). The Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test is the current standard for detecting COVID-19. However, CT scans can be applied for radiological inspection to detect infections in their earliest lung stages. Machine learning, specifically deep learning, can potentially speed up the evaluation of CT scan diagnoses of COVID-19. To date, no studies have been discovered that employ SGD, Adamax, or AdaGrad optimization methods with deep learning VGG model variants for COVID-19 detection in CT scan images with datasets comprising 2,038 images. This study aims to assess and compare the performance of various optimization methods for detecting COVID-19 utilizing variations of the VGG-16 and VGG-19 models based on CT scan images. Results from performance optimization comparison tests employing two VGG deep learning models were obtained, demonstrating the influence of optimization methods on model performance. The Adamax optimization method applied to the VGG-16 model performance achieved an average accuracy of 94.11% in COVID-19 detection using CT scan images, while the Adamax optimization method applied to the VGG-19 model performance achieved an average accuracy of 93.77%.