IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence (IJ-AI)
Vol 15, No 2: April 2026

RBC_Frame_Net: a hybrid deep learning framework for detection of red blood cells in malaria diagnostic smear

P., Muhammad Shameem (Unknown)
Balakrishnan, Mathiarasi (Unknown)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Apr 2026

Abstract

Malaria continues to pose a major global health threat, especially in areas where timely and accurate diagnosis is essential for effective treatment. Conventional diagnostic techniques, such as manually examining Giemsa stained blood smears, are often time-intensive, laborious, and susceptible to human error. To overcome these challenges, this study presents red blood cell frame network (RBC_Frame_Net), a novel deep-learning framework that combines convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with transformer based architectures, augmented by attention mechanisms, for the automated identification of RBCs in malaria smear images. The framework leverages the convolutional block attention modules (CBAM)-UNet model for segmentation, enhancing both spatial and channel features through CBAM and integrates the detection transformer (DETR) to accurately detect and classify RBCs within the diagnostic images. The model achieved outstanding performance with a segmentation intersection over union (IoU) of 0.97, a Dice coefficient of 0.98, and near-perfect detection results (precision: 0.999, recall: 0.998, and mean average precision (mAP): 0.995). When compared to leading models such as YOLOv8, faster region-based convolutional neural network (Faster R-CNN), and EfficientDet-D3, and RBC_Frame_Net demonstrated superior accuracy and robustness. The inclusion of attention mechanisms and a hybrid architecture enhance its adaptability, making it well-suited for deployment in real-world, resource limited environments and positioning it as a valuable asset in automated malaria diagnostics.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

IJAI

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Engineering

Description

IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence (IJ-AI) publishes articles in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The scope covers all artificial intelligence area and its application in the following topics: neural networks; fuzzy logic; simulated biological evolution algorithms (like ...