Detection of Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Deep Learning Models
Detection of Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Deep Learning Models
2024 Second International Conference on Inventive Computing and Informatics (ICICI) | 979-8-3503-7329-5/24/$31.00 ©2024 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICICI62254.2024.00050
Abstract—Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a serious devel- might look like simple laziness or lack of motivation up to
opmental disorder that involves problems with social interaction severe cases when such a person cannot speak properly while
and communication, as well as repetitive behavior. Early diag- handling simple tasks such as reading and writing without
nosis and treatment are key to improving the lives of people
with autism. One recent breakthrough in the field involves the assistance has become a challenge for them. Regrettably,
use of cutting-edge machine learning algorithms to automatically due to minimum resources accessible, general ignorance, and
identify ASD using different kinds of data like behavioral wrong diagnosis there has been an overwhelming increase in
observations. The proposed approach combines various types of the number of this disorder among people residing in the
deep learning models such as YOLOv8n, Detectron2, VGG16, nation [15]. One more contributing factor [16] on why this
ResNet50, Xception, Inceptionv3, and MobileNetV2. Using these
models’ capabilities, the goal of the research study is to increase diagnosis often comes late is because it may be confused with
the distinction between ASD-related behavior signals and normal mental retardation or schizophrenia in adults who exhibit such
development patterns. The effectiveness of our method was symptoms but do not always develop autism. Drafting effective
demonstrated by test results which showed it was highly accurate. policies and intervening early can go a long way in solving
the problems faced by autistic children and integrating them
Index Terms—Autism, YOLOv8n, Detectron, Disorder
into society.
Because ASD has many complicated and little-known
I. I NTRODUCTION
causes, prevention techniques [14] have not yet been devel-
Autism spectrum disorder is a form of neurodevelopmental oped. However, risk factors can be reduced and children’s
disease in which sufferers struggle repeatedly with restricted or healthy development can be supported by encouraging prenatal
repetitive activities as well as difficulties with communication care, reducing exposure to environmental pollutants, and offer-
and social interaction. The reason the condition is referred ing early intervention services. The present research endeavors
to as ”spectrum” is that it encompasses a wide range of are of paramount importance in devising techniques to pre-
symptoms, and individuals who are impacted may have varied cisely differentiate between conventional and ASD-associated
combinations or intensities of symptoms. These people might behavioral patterns. This will augment the early identification
struggle to control their emotions, making them unaware of and intervention approaches for ASD, finally leading to better
how their actions affect other people. They also struggle results for those impacted by ASD.
to trust new people and modify their behavior to fit into
unexpected circumstances, which makes it difficult for them II. R ELATED W ORK
to develop and maintain friends [17]. The identification of ASD is crucial for early intervention
According to statistics, more children in India are being and support, leading to improved outcomes for individuals and
diagnosed with autism; between ages two and nine, it is better management of healthcare resources. Early detection
estimated that ASD affects 1 to 1.5% of kids in the country. [12] allows for timely access to interventions and therapies
Studies have indicated lower autism rates in developing coun- tailored to the individual’s needs, promoting optimal develop-
tries; 1 out of 45 children (ages 3-17) in the US versus only ment and functioning. Moreover, [13] accurate diagnosis aids
23 out of 10,000 children in India are diagnosed with autism. in the effective allocation of healthcare resources and the im-
About 10 percent of all students at schools have various plementation of appropriate support services, benefiting both
levels of learning difficulties ranging from mild ones which individuals with ASD and the healthcare system as a whole. A
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biomarkers which are stable enough for example neuroimaging some minute aspects like facial expression differences or ASD
tests, genetic markers or other objective measures. Moreover, diagnosis would improve greatly as shown by this model.
tracking people with autism from their childhood years to MobilenetV2: The lightweight design of the MobileNetV2
adulthood would be a helpful move forward for the discipline. model makes it ideal for mobile devices or low-resource
Such studies should help people understand how autism takes environments. With this lightweight model, calculating and
shape over time as well as examining what can lead to this memory consumption are optimized to enable real-time ASD
disease. Tracking these people could also help determine detection, which means that there would be simpler ways of
whether treating them early enough can completely cure or screening this disorder that can be scaled as well.
not. By addressing these research gaps mainly by combining
the behavioral patterns and the envirornment, we can advance Xception: Xception can more efficiently capture spatial
our understanding of ASD and improve outcomes for affected dependencies due to its usage of separable convolutions in
individuals and their families. depthwise order. The enhanced feature extraction capabilities
in this model might prove beneficial for autism spectrum dis-
III. M ETHODOLOGY order detection algorithm sensitivity on a number of datasets
The ”Autism Image Data” dataset on Kaggle [11] consists that have complex or high-dimensional input types such as
of images relevant to ASD, including facial images, and neuroimaging as well as genetic information input data.
behavioral observations. Each image is accompanied by labels YOLOv8n: An enhanced object recognition algorithm,
indicating autism diagnosis status. The dataset comprises called YOLOv8, might have an immense impact on autism
images of children aged between 3 and 9 years old, providing identification through enabling fast and effective screening.
a representative sample of the developmental stage. This Automated capabilities in this algorithm, makes it possible
dataset serves to train machine and deep learning models for for very quick detection hence automatic evaluation on im-
autism detection, conduct research on visual traits associated ages/footage so that there is elimination unnecessary proce-
with ASD, and explore correlations between data and autism dural steps characterized by subjective assessments yielding
characteristics. This dataset can be used for academic studies, biased outcomes. Automating the initial screening tasks could
algorithm development, educational projects, or exploratory help healthcare professionals to use their resources effectively,
analysis. To improve the precision and reliability of autism concentrating on interpreting results and making personalized
detection we have to increase the diversity and quantity of the interventions. Among the main features of YOLOv8 are mo-
training data. So we applied augmentation techniques mainly saic data augmentation, anovel anchor-free detection that uses
rotation, flipping, scaling, and adding noise. a C2f module, a head that is decoupled and thus can learn in
In our study, we introduced transfer learning which involves a detector and a loss function that has been modified. Further
capitalizing on pre-trained models designed for similar tasks still, the use of YOLOv8 in autism detection may facilitate
so as to detect face changes on images. It leverages on research by uncovering visual markers or patterns connected
the knowledge learned by these models on diverse datasets with ASD that might be useful for enhancing comprehension
during their original training in this approach. It is more and prevention methods at infancy. We can improve the model
helpful especially when less training data is available since this performance by incoorporating YOLOv8n to the detection
makes improved results possible through exploiting common system.
attributes from different jobs.
We explored several different models in the detection of Detectron2: Detectron2 utilizes cutting edge object detec-
ASD: tion algorithms to have a keen eye on facial expressions or
VGG16: VGG16 is famous for its deep architecture, allow- behavior that show autism. By managing different data types
ing it to capture complex features in images. Its depth and and scenes in an intricate manner, it increases the accuracy of
simplicity make it a good choice for extracting features in identifying autism through screening.
ASD detection from image data, which might help recognize Each of the models comes with unique strengths for an
hidden facial cues or behavioural patterns related to ASD. ASD detector based on robust feature extraction or real-time
ResNet50: Without the vanishing gradient problem, deeper processing capacities that will typically enhance the overall
neural networks are possible with ResNet50’s residual learning ASD detection process thus leading to better and faster
framework. To capture the complex variations in facial expres- methods of screening ASD. In our case, transfer learning
sions or brain imaging data associated with ASD detection and was a promising approach. There were distinct strengths and
in turn enhance classification accuracy, it might be beneficial complexities of these models in place for accurately detecting
to use it as well because of its effectiveness at learning morphed faces within images. So we built separate models
hierarchical features. by incorporating these models. We found that Detectron2
InceptionV3: Several plus point of InceptionV3 include the produced the best results once we ran all these models
ability to detect global features or local ones within pho- together.
tographs, through the use of multifaceted filters that operate
at different scales. In case you did not know, this means
that it can take into account these Summarizing them, hence
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TABLE I
ACCURACIES AND LOSSES OF VGG16, R ES N ET 50, I NCEPTION V3,
X CEPTION AND M OBILE N ET V2
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power for processing them which may not allow enough room
for deep learning parameters. An account of this is their
effectiveness when using resources, their capability when it
comes to detecting numerous objects and resistance to changes
in the environment; because of these reasons robots are likely
to operate in different hospitals and other medical institutions;
in addition, they can be interconnected with medical infor-
mation systems so that new automated systems are used for
diagnosing ASD which facilitate the treatment and increases
quality of patients life. In future works, further exploration
could focus on enhancing the efficiency and scalability of the
trained model by optimizing hyperparameters and exploring
advanced training techniques. Additionally, investigating the
model’s performance on larger and more diverse datasets could
provide valuable insights into its generalization capabilities
across various real-world scenarios.
Fig. 3. Total loss of Detectron
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