Deep learning pipeline for image classification on mobile phones

This article proposes and documents a machine-learning framework and tutorial for classifying images using mobile phones. Compared to computers, the performance of deep learning model performance degrades when deployed on a mobile phone and requires a systematic approach to find a model that performs optimally on both computers and mobile phones. By following the proposed pipeline, which consists of various computational tools, simple procedural recipes, and technical considerations, one can bring the power of deep learning medical image classification to mobile devices, potentially unlocking new domains of applications. The pipeline is demonstrated on four different publicly available datasets: COVID X-rays, COVID CT scans, leaves, and colorectal cancer. We used two application development frameworks: TensorFlow Lite (real-time testing) and Flutter (digital image testing) to test the proposed pipeline. We found that transferring deep learning models to a mobile phone is limited by hardware and classification accuracy drops. To address this issue, we proposed this pipeline to find an optimized model for mobile phones. Finally, we discuss additional applications and computational concerns related to deploying deep-learning models on phones, including real-time analysis and image preprocessing. We believe the associated documentation and code can help physicians and medical experts develop medical image classification applications for distribution.