Conference Paper2025

Deep Learning for Accurate Classification of Pulmonary Edema Severity in Chest X-Rays: A Comparative Evaluation of CNN Models with Grad-CAM Feature Visualization

Manosh Sur Choudhury, Rashedur Rahman, Siam Tahsin Bhuiyan, Sefatul Wasi, Saadia Binte Alam

2025 International Conference on Wavelet Analysis and Pattern Recognition (ICWAPR)

IEEE, pp. 72-77

  • Good Health and Well-being — Relevance: 95%

Abstract

Accurate classification of pulmonary edema severity is essential for timely diagnosis and effective management, as each severity level requires distinct therapeutic interventions. Differentiating between edema severity classes is particularly challenging due to the overlapping radiographic features of Chest X-ray (CXR). Deep learning, especially convolutional neural networks (CNNs), presents a promising solution by automating classification and identifying subtle features often difficult to detect through conventional methods. This study evaluates the performance of six traditional deep learning models for classifying pulmonary edema severity. Among these, CheXNet achieved the best performance, with an accuracy of 91% and an overall AUC score of 0.88. The findings highlight the importance of using pretraining on CXR datasets, which significantly enhances model performance compared to general pretraining. Additionally, Grad-CAM visualization was employed to interpret model decisions, identifying key radiographic features that contribute to accurate classification across different severity levels.

Keywords

  • convolutional neural networks
  • Grad-CAM
  • CheXNet
  • chest radiography
  • Pulmonary edema
  • transfer learning
  • model interpretability

CCDS Authors

Manosh Sur Choudhury
Manosh Sur Choudhury

Manosh Sur Choudhury

  • Research Assistant, CCDS

Masters

+1 more affiliation

Dhaka University

Md. Rashedur Rahman, D. Eng.
Md. Rashedur Rahman, D. Eng.

Md. Rashedur Rahman, D. Eng.

  • Co-Director, MIRA & NEST Wings

Assistant Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Independent University, Bangladesh

Published at

CHI, HCII, Scientific Reports, Cognitive Computation, Neural Computing and Applications

Siam Tahsin Bhuiyan
Siam Tahsin Bhuiyan

Siam Tahsin Bhuiyan

  • Intern, CCDS

Bachelors

Independent University, Bangladesh

Published at

Scientific Reports

Saadia Binte Alam, PhD
Saadia Binte Alam, PhD

Saadia Binte Alam, PhD

  • Director, MIRA & WiSE Wings

Associate Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Independent University, Bangladesh

Published at

HCII, Scientific Reports, Cognitive Computation, Neural Computing and Applications

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