Detection of tibial fractures in cats and dogs with deep learning

The aim of this study is to classify tibia (fracture/no fracture) on whole/partial body digital images of cats and dogs, and to localize the fracture on fracture tibia by using deep learning methods. This study provides to diagnose fracture on tibia more accurately, quickly and safe for clinicians. In this study, a total of 1488 dog and cat images that were obtained from universities and institutions were used. Three different studies were implemented to detect fracture tibia. In the first phase of the first study, tibia was classified automatically as fracture or no fracture with Mask R-CNN. In the second phase, the fracture location in the fracture tibia image that obtained from the first phase was localized with Mask R-CNN. In the second study, the fracture location was directly localized with Mask R-CNN. In the third study, fracture location in the fracture tibia that obtained from the first phase of first study was localized with SSD. The accuracy and F1 score values in first phase of first study were 74% and 85%, respectively and F1 score value in second phase of first study was 84.5%. The accuracy and F1 score of second study were 52.1% and 68.5%, respectively. The F1 score of third study was 46.2%. The results of the research showed that the first study was promising for detection of fractures in the tibia and the dissemination of the fracture diagnosis with the help of such smart systems would also be beneficial for animal welfare.