Hybrid Ensemble Deep Learning Model for Advancing Ischemic Brain Stroke Detection and Classification in Clinical Application

Ischemic brain strokes are severe medical conditions that occur due to blockages in the brain's blood flow, often caused by blood clots or artery blockages. Early detection is crucial for effective treatment. This study aims to improve the detection and classification of ischemic brain strokes in clinical settings by introducing a new approach that integrates the stroke precision enhancement, ensemble deep learning, and intelligent lesion detection and segmentation models. The proposed hybrid model was trained and tested using a dataset of 10,000 computed tomography scans. A 25-fold cross-validation technique was employed, while the model's performance was evaluated using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score. The findings indicate significant improvements in accuracy for different stages of stroke images when enhanced using the SPEM model with contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization set to 4. Specifically, accuracy showed significant improvement (from 0.876 to 0.933) for hyper-acute stroke images; from 0.881 to 0.948 for acute stroke images, from 0.927 to 0.974 for sub-acute stroke images, and from 0.928 to 0.982 for chronic stroke images. Thus, the study shows significant promise for the detection and classification of ischemic brain strokes. Further research is needed to validate its performance on larger datasets and enhance its integration into clinical settings.