{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,30]],"date-time":"2026-07-30T10:14:38Z","timestamp":1785406478181,"version":"3.56.0"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,28]],"date-time":"2026-06-28T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1782604800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100012547","name":"Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2025JJH170118"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2025JJH170118"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100012547","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Youth Research Project of Wuzhou University","award":["2025QN028"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2025QN028"]}]},{"award":["2025QN028"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2025QN028"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01vv37n49","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Research Project of Wuzhou University","award":["2023B003"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023B003"]}]},{"award":["2023B003"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2023B003"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01vv37n49","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"name":"Guangxi Regional Innovation Capacity Enhancement Plan Project","award":["2026XT1502035"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2026XT1502035"]}]},{"name":"Wuzhou Science and Technology Plan Project","award":["202302034"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["202302034"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Biosensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Compact malaria detectors for microcontrollers are almost always benchmarked on the NIH Malaria dataset with a per-cell random split. This leaks slide identity because the cells come from only about 200 slides and a random split mixes same-slide cells across training and testing. The leakage also distorts architectural conclusions: under a leakage-free slide-disjoint protocol, per-module ablation gains collapse to seed noise and an apparent cross-site robustness variant loses most of its advantage. Headline accuracy falls from 97.1% to 95.6%, a gap that sits within the cross-seed noise, and all eight tested architectures move the same way. The evidence is this unanimous direction, not the size of any single gap. This benchmarking finding is our main contribution. Two results survive. First, MalariaNet, our 21 K-parameter detector, reaches about 95.6% accuracy at 23.5 KB of INT8 weights, with a numerically faithful on-chip forward on an STM32H743 at a 1.2 FPS triage rate. Second, it is among the most interference-robust of the eight networks and the most robust microcontroller-deployable model. Scope is limited to single P. falciparum thin-smear cells. Slide-disjoint evaluation should become standard, and we provide MalariaNet as the first leakage-free, on-device-validated point-of-care malaria reference.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/bios16070358","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,29]],"date-time":"2026-06-29T05:49:33Z","timestamp":1782712173000},"page":"358","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["MalariaNet: A Microcontroller-Deployable Malaria-Microscopy Detector for Point-of-Care Biosensing Under Leakage-Free Evaluation"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Mengdi","family":"Hou","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Guangxi Key Laboratory of Machine Vision and Intelligent Control, Wuzhou University, Wuzhou 543000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Gaoming","family":"He","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Guangxi Key Laboratory of Machine Vision and Intelligent Control, Wuzhou University, Wuzhou 543000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zongchang","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Guangxi Key Laboratory of Machine Vision and Intelligent Control, Wuzhou University, Wuzhou 543000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0009-3549-9036","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jianbo","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Application, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin 541004, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Heliang","family":"Zou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Guangxi Key Laboratory of Machine Vision and Intelligent Control, Wuzhou University, Wuzhou 543000, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,28]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"World Health Organization (2023). 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