Research Article

A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES

Volume: 15 Number: 2 July 1, 2026
TR EN

A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES

Abstract

COVID-19 and pneumonia are among the most common respiratory diseases worldwide and are linked to high morbidity and mortality. Rapid and reliable detection is essential for effective clinical management. This study applies the YOLOv11m deep learning model to classify chest X-ray images into three categories: COVID-19, Normal, and Pneumonia. The dataset, obtained from the publicly available Kaggle repository, includes 1,518 radiographs (COVID-19: 363; Normal: 1,020; Pneumonia: 135) and is divided into training (80%), testing (10%), and validation (10%) subsets. A three-stage preprocessing pipeline was used to isolate pulmonary regions: Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) for contrast enhancement, Otsu thresholding with morphological operations for binary lung mask generation, and cropping of lung areas with 3% padding before resizing to 224 × 224 pixels. The model was trained using the PyTorch framework. Performance evaluation included precision, recall, F1-score, ROC-AUC, and Top-1/Top-5 accuracy. YOLOv11m achieved 98.16% Top-1 accuracy, 100% Top-5 accuracy, a macro F1-score of 0.9708, and a macro ROC-AUC of 0.9993. Class-specific F1-scores were 98.0% for COVID-19, 98.7% for Normal, and 94.5% for Pneumonia. These findings demonstrate that YOLOv11m can effectively distinguish COVID-19, Normal, and Pneumonia patterns on chest radiographs, highlighting its strong potential for AI-assisted diagnostic and clinical decision-support applications.

Keywords

Supporting Institution

This research received no external funding.

Ethical Statement

This study was conducted using a publicly available dataset (COVID-19 Radiography Database, Kaggle). The dataset contains de-identified chest X-ray images and does not include any personal or identifiable patient information. Therefore, according to institutional and international research ethics guidelines, ethical approval and informed consent were not required.

References

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Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Biomedical Imaging

Journal Section

Research Article

Publication Date

July 1, 2026

Submission Date

January 25, 2026

Acceptance Date

May 10, 2026

Published in Issue

Year 2026 Volume: 15 Number: 2

APA
Balcı, B., & Basciftci, F. (2026). A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES. Turkish Journal of Nature and Science, 15(2), 196-206. https://doi.org/10.46810/tdfd.1871343
AMA
1.Balcı B, Basciftci F. A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES. TJNS. 2026;15(2):196-206. doi:10.46810/tdfd.1871343
Chicago
Balcı, Berin, and Fatih Basciftci. 2026. “A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES”. Turkish Journal of Nature and Science 15 (2): 196-206. https://doi.org/10.46810/tdfd.1871343.
EndNote
Balcı B, Basciftci F (July 1, 2026) A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES. Turkish Journal of Nature and Science 15 2 196–206.
IEEE
[1]B. Balcı and F. Basciftci, “A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES”, TJNS, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 196–206, July 2026, doi: 10.46810/tdfd.1871343.
ISNAD
Balcı, Berin - Basciftci, Fatih. “A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES”. Turkish Journal of Nature and Science 15/2 (July 1, 2026): 196-206. https://doi.org/10.46810/tdfd.1871343.
JAMA
1.Balcı B, Basciftci F. A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES. TJNS. 2026;15:196–206.
MLA
Balcı, Berin, and Fatih Basciftci. “A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES”. Turkish Journal of Nature and Science, vol. 15, no. 2, July 2026, pp. 196-0, doi:10.46810/tdfd.1871343.
Vancouver
1.Berin Balcı, Fatih Basciftci. A DEEP LEARNING APPROACH BASED ON YOLOV11M FOR CLASSIFYING COVID-19 AND PNEUMONIA ON CHEST X-RAY IMAGES. TJNS. 2026 Jul. 1;15(2):196-20. doi:10.46810/tdfd.1871343