Predicting Canine Hip Dysplasia in X-Ray Images Using Deep Learning

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) and transfer learning are receiving a lot of attention because of the positive results achieved on image recognition and classification. Hip dysplasia is the most prevalent hereditary orthopedic disease in the dog. The definitive diagnosis is using the hip radiographic image. This article compares the results of the conventional canine hip dysplasia (CHD) classification by a radiologist using the Fédération Cynologique Internationale criteria and the computer image classification using the Inception-V3, Google’s pre-trained CNN, combined with the transfer learning technique. The experiment’s goal was to measure the accuracy of the model on classifying normal and abnormal images, using a small dataset to train the model. The results were satisfactory considering that, the developed model classified 75% of the analyzed images correctly. However, some improvements are desired and could be achieved in future works by developing a software to select areas of interest from the hip joints and evaluating each hip individually.