Auto Machine Learning and Convolutional Neural Network in Diabetes Mellitus Research—The Role of Histopathological Images in Designing and Exploring Experimental Models

Iulian Tătaru, Simona Moldovanu, Oana-Maria Dragostin, Carmen Lidia Chiţescu, Alexandra-Simona Zamfir, Ionut Dragostin, Liliana Strat, Carmen Lăcrămioara Zamfir

Histopathological images represent a valuable data source for pathologists, who can provide clinicians with essential landmarks for complex pathologies. The development of sophisticated computational models for histopathological images has received significant attention in recent years, but most of them rely on free datasets. Materials and Methods: Motivated by this drawback, the authors created an original histopathological image dataset that resulted from an animal experimental model, acquiring images from normal female rats/rats with experimentally induced diabetes mellitus (DM)/rats who received an antidiabetic therapy with a synthetic compound (AD_SC). Images were acquired from vaginal, uterine, and ovarian samples from both MD and AD_DC specimens. The experiment received the approval of the Medical Ethics Committee of the “Gr. T. Popa” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iași, Romania (Approval No. 169/22.03.2022). The novelty of the study consists of the following aspects. The first is the use of a diabetes-induced animal model to evaluate the impact of an antidiabetic therapy with a synthetic compound in female rats, focusing on three distinct organs of the reproductive system (vagina, ovary, and uterus), to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how diabetes affects female reproductive health as a whole. The second comprises image classification with a custom-built convolutional neural network (CB-CNN), the extraction of textural features (contrast, entropy, energy, and homogeneity), and their classification with PyCaret Auto Machine Learning (AutoML). Results: Experimental findings indicate that uterine tissue, both for MD and AD_DC, can be diagnosed with an accuracy of 94.5% and 85.8%, respectively. The Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) classifier features indicate a high accuracy of 86.3% when supplied with features extracted from vaginal tissue. Conclusions: Our research underscores the efficacy of classifying with two AI algorithms, CNN and machine learning.