Chest X-Ray Images Clustering Using Convolutional Autoencoder for Lung Disease Detection

In healthcare, medical imaging is commonly used for health assessments. One of the most commonly used types of medical imaging is X-ray imaging. One area that often undergoes examination using this modality is the lungs, where healthcare professionals use X-ray images to interpret the results. However, prolonged interpretation of X-ray results by healthcare professionals and other work activities can lead to errors and potentially result in invalid disease identification. There is a need for a system that can classify the detection results from these images to assist healthcare professionals in their tasks. Various methods can be used for this purpose, such as classification, clustering, segmentation, etc. However, data labeling requires significant resources and costs, especially with large-scale datasets. One possible solution is to use an unsupervised learning approach to address this. One method under unsupervised learning is clustering, which allows the system to process and understand data patterns without needing external annotations or manual labeling. This research uses an autoencoder as a subcategory of unsupervised learning. This is because autoencoders can automatically extract relevant features from the data without needing external label guidance. The research utilizes a dataset consisting of 700 X-ray images of the chest, including 500 images showing disease and 200 normal X-ray images. This research aims to determine the effectiveness of clustering methods using an autoencoder model in grouping X-ray image results. The research conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, an autoencoder with 18 Layers was used, resulting in the best performance with a value of K=15 and a rand index of 76%. In the second experiment, an autoencoder with a reduced number of Layers (11 Layers) was used, and it achieved the best performance with a value of K=15 and a rand index of 87%.