A novel lightweight deep learning based approaches for the automatic diagnosis of gastrointestinal disease using image processing and knowledge distillation techniques

Background: Gastrointestinal (GI) diseases pose significant challenges for healthcare systems, largely due to the complexities involved in their detection and treatment. Despite the advancements in deep neural networks, their high computational demands hinder their practical use in clinical environments. Objective: This study aims to address the computational inefficiencies of deep neural networks by proposing a lightweight model that integrates model compression techniques, ConvLSTM layers, and ConvNext Blocks, all optimized through Knowledge Distillation (KD). Methods: A dataset of 6000 endoscopic images of various GI diseases was utilized. Advanced image preprocessing techniques, including adaptive noise reduction and image detail enhancement, were employed to improve accuracy and interpretability. The model's performance was assessed in terms of accuracy, computational cost, and disk space usage. Results: The proposed lightweight model achieved an exceptional overall accuracy of 99.38 %. It operates efficiently with a computational cost of 0.61 GFLOPs and occupies only 3.09 MB of disk space. Additionally, GradCAM visualizations demonstrated enhanced model saliency and interpretability, offering insights into the decision-making process of the model post-KD. Conclusion: The proposed model represents a significant advancement in the diagnosis of GI diseases. It provides a cost-effective and efficient alternative to traditional deep neural network methods, overcoming their computational limitations and contributing valuable insights for improved clinical application.