Artefact-Aware Fungal Detection in Dermatophytosis: A Real-Time Transformer-Based Approach for KOH Microscopy

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.19156v1
• Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2026 12:35:17 GMT
• Title: Artefact-Aware Fungal Detection in Dermatophytosis: A Real-Time Transformer-Based Approach for KOH Microscopy
• Authors: Rana Gursoy, Abdurrahim Yilmaz, Baris Kizilyaprak, Esmahan Caglar, Burak Temelkuran, Huseyin Uvet, Ayse Esra Koku Aksu, Gulsum Gencoglan,
• Abstract summary: This study presents a transformer-based detection framework using the RT-DETR model architecture.<n>It achieves precise, query-driven localization of fungal structures in high-resolution potassium hydroxide (KOH) images.
• Score: 0.28909295536379814
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Abstract: Dermatophytosis is commonly assessed using potassium hydroxide (KOH) microscopy, yet accurate recognition of fungal hyphae is hindered by artefacts, heterogeneous keratin clearance, and notable inter-observer variability. This study presents a transformer-based detection framework using the RT-DETR model architecture to achieve precise, query-driven localization of fungal structures in high-resolution KOH images. A dataset of 2,540 routinely acquired microscopy images was manually annotated using a multi-class strategy to explicitly distinguish fungal elements from confounding artefacts. The model was trained with morphology-preserving augmentations to maintain the structural integrity of thin hyphae. Evaluation on an independent test set demonstrated robust object-level performance, with a recall of 0.9737, precision of 0.8043, and an AP@0.50 of 93.56%. When aggregated for image-level diagnosis, the model achieved 100% sensitivity and 98.8% accuracy, correctly identifying all positive cases without missing a single diagnosis. Qualitative outputs confirmed the robust localization of low-contrast hyphae even in artefact-rich fields. These results highlight that an artificial intelligence (AI) system can serve as a highly reliable, automated screening tool, effectively bridging the gap between image-level analysis and clinical decision-making in dermatomycology.

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