{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,11]],"date-time":"2026-09-11T18:36:41Z","timestamp":1789151801154,"version":"build-2803163510"},"update-to":[{"DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pntd.0012879","type":"new_version","label":"New version","source":"publisher","updated":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,8]],"date-time":"2025-08-08T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1754611200000}}],"reference-count":48,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,4]],"date-time":"2025-08-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1754265600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000865","name":"Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["INV-008782"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["INV-008782"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000865","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Harvey and Leslie Wagner Foundation","award":["N\/A"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["N\/A"]}]},{"name":"Mitsuru and Lucinda Igarashi Fund","award":["N\/A"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["N\/A"]}]},{"name":"New Frontiers in Research Fund","award":["NFRFE-2020-00922"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["NFRFE-2020-00922"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100000024","name":"Canadian Institutes of Health Research","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["PJT-183575"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["PJT-183575"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100000024","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosntds.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS Negl Trop Dis"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Schistosomiasis currently affects over 250 million people and remains a public health burden despite ongoing global control efforts. Conventional microscopy is a practical tool for diagnosis and screening of <jats:italic>Schistosoma haematobium<\/jats:italic>, but identification of eggs requires a skilled microscopist. Here we present a machine learning (ML)-based strategy for automated detection of <jats:italic>S. haematobium<\/jats:italic> that combines two imaging contrasts, brightfield (BF) and darkfield (DF), to improve diagnostic performance. We collected BF and DF images of urine samples, many of them containing <jats:italic>S. haematobium<\/jats:italic> eggs, during two different field studies in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire using a mobile phone-based microscope, the SchistoScope. We then trained separate egg-detection ML models and compared the patient-level performance of BF and DF models alone to combinations of BF and DF models, using annotations from trained microscopists as the gold standard. We found that models trained on DF images, and almost all BF and DF combinations, performed significantly better than models trained on BF images only. When models were trained on images from the first field study (n\u2009=\u2009349 patients, 748 images of each contrast), patient-level classification performance on patient images from the second study (n\u2009=\u2009375 patients, 752 images of each contrast) met the WHO Diagnostic Target Product Profile (TPP) sensitivity and specificity for the monitoring and evaluation use case (sensitivity for all models and combinations was &gt;75% when evaluated at a confidence score threshold that resulted in specificity &gt;96.5%). When we used images from both field studies for the training set, performance of the models was improved. Overall, this work shows that the use of DF and BF increases the performance of ML models on images from devices with low-cost optics, while retaining the portability, power, and time-to-results of the WHO\u2019s diagnostic TPP. DF requires no additional sample preparation and does not increase the complexity of the imaging system. It thus offers a practical means to improve performance of automated diagnostics for <jats:italic>S. haematobium<\/jats:italic> as well as other microscopy-based diagnostics.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pntd.0012879","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,4]],"date-time":"2025-08-04T17:45:16Z","timestamp":1754329516000},"page":"e0012879","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pntd.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Multi-contrast machine learning improves schistosomiasis diagnostic performance"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"19","author":[{"given":"Mar\u00eda","family":"D\u00edaz de Le\u00f3n Derby","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Charles B.","family":"Delahunt","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ethan","family":"Spencer","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jean T.","family":"Coulibaly","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Kigbafori D.","family":"Silu\u00e9","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Isaac I.","family":"Bogoch","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Anne-Laure","family":"Le Ny","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1890-5364","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Daniel A.","family":"Fletcher","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,4]]},"reference":[{"issue":"1","key":"pntd.0012879.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"13","DOI":"10.1038\/s41572-018-0013-8","article-title":"Schistosomiasis","volume":"4","author":"DP McManus","year":"2018","journal-title":"Nat Rev Dis Primers."},{"key":"pntd.0012879.ref002","unstructured":"World Health Organization Diagnostics Technical Advisory Group (DTAG). 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