# CoTCoNet: An Optimized Coupled Transformer-Convolutional Network with an Adaptive Graph Reconstruction for Leukemia Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08797 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08797/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [A ConvNet for the 2020s](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03545/) (2022)
- [UNet++: A Nested U-Net Architecture for Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10165/) (2018)
- [CMT: Convolutional Neural Networks Meet Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06263/) (2021)
- [Learning Enriched Features for Fast Image Restoration and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01649/) (2022)
- [CellViT: Vision Transformers for Precise Cell Segmentation and Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15350/) (2023)
- [MedViT: A Robust Vision Transformer for Generalized Medical Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.09462/) (2023)
- [Accurate Leukocyte Detection Based on Deformable-DETR and Multi-Level Feature Fusion for Aiding Diagnosis of Blood Diseases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00926/) (2024)
- [SDCT-AuxNetθ: DCT Augmented Stain Deconvolutional CNN with Auxiliary Classifier for Cancer Diagnosis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.00304/) (2020)
- [Imbalanced Domain Generalization for Robust Single Cell Classification in Hematological Cytomorphology](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07771/) (2023)
- [CosSIF: Cosine similarity-based image filtering to overcome low inter-class variation in synthetic medical image datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.13842/) (2023)
- [Automated Whole Slide Imaging for Label-Free Histology using Photon Absorption Remote Sensing Microscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13736/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [An Explainable Contrastive-based Dilated Convolutional Network with Transformer for Pediatric Pneumonia Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16143/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models Meet Stance Detection: A Survey of Tasks, Methods, Applications, Challenges and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08464/) (2025)
- [MNet-SAt: A Multiscale Network with Spatial-enhanced Attention for Segmentation of Polyps in Colonoscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19464/) (2024)
- [An Explainable Deep Neural Network with Frequency-Aware Channel and Spatial Refinement for Flood Prediction in Sustainable Cities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08003/) (2025)
- [Emotion-aware Dual Cross-Attentive Neural Network with Label Fusion for Stance Detection in Misinformative Social Media Content](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23812/) (2025)
- [T-MPEDNet: Unveiling the Synergy of Transformer-aware Multiscale Progressive Encoder-Decoder Network with Feature Recalibration for Tumor and Liver Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19590/) (2025)
- [A multi-temporal multi-spectral attention-augmented deep convolution neural network with contrastive learning for crop yield prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15966/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Swift and accurate blood smear analysis is an effective diagnostic method for leukemia and other hematological malignancies. However, manual leukocyte count and morphological evaluation using a microscope is time-consuming and prone to errors. Conventional image processing methods also exhibit limitations in differentiating cells due to the visual similarity between malignant and benign cell morphology. This limitation is further compounded by the skewed training data that hinders the extraction of reliable and pertinent features. In response to these challenges, we propose an optimized Coupled Transformer Convolutional Network (CoTCoNet) framework for the classification of leukemia, which employs a well-designed transformer integrated with a deep convolutional network to effectively capture comprehensive global features and scalable spatial patterns, enabling the identification of complex and large-scale hematological features. Further, the framework incorporates a graph-based feature reconstruction module to reveal the hidden or unobserved hard-to-see biological features of leukocyte cells and employs a Population-based Meta-Heuristic Algorithm for feature selection and optimization. To mitigate data imbalance issues, we employ a synthetic leukocyte generator. In the evaluation phase, we initially assess CoTCoNet on a dataset containing 16,982 annotated cells, and it achieves remarkable accuracy and F1-Score rates of 0.9894 and 0.9893, respectively. To broaden the generalizability of our model, we evaluate it across four publicly available diverse datasets, which include the aforementioned dataset. This evaluation demonstrates that our method outperforms current state-of-the-art approaches. We also incorporate an explainability approach in the form of feature visualization closely aligned with cell annotations to provide a deeper understanding of the framework.