A Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) Based Framework for Enhanced Diagnosis and Classification of COVID-19 Pneumonia

COVID-19 pneumonia is a persistent worldwide health problem that usually affects the most vulnerable groups in society: the newborn and aged populations. Most of the current endeavors toward handling diagnosis and classification of pneumonia have used numerous techniques for machine learning and deep learning, with a particular focus on COVID-19 pneumonia. However, most of these techniques have raised concerns with regard to diagnostic precision as a result of the limited application of advanced algorithms, datasets whose validation is mostly inadequate and predictive capability. To address these limitations, our research introduces a deep learning-based approach by Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), which enhances the performance in classifying COVID-19 pneumonia. Salient features of the proposed method include a four-step process: first, data acquisition from a comprehensive chest X-ray dataset on GitHub; second, processing and analyzing the data through visual means like histograms and scatter plots; third, using CNNs supplemented with techniques for data augmentation in supervised learning; lastly, performance evaluation to benchmark against existing models. The present study uses features from X-ray images with the help of CNN's advanced pattern recognition capabilities in pursuit of achieving better generalization and precision in classification. The model achieved an accuracy of 85.70\% and precision of 88.6%, which surpasses the existing techniques and thereby built the promise of improving the accuracy of the diagnostic process, hence, leading to improved care for the patients, and more so forms the foundation on which future AI-powered healthcare diagnostics are expected to take off.