A novel approach for classifying brain tumours combining a squeezenet model with SVM and fine-tuning

Abstract

Cancer of the brain is most common in the elderly and young and can be fatal in both. Brain tumours can heal better if they are diagnosed and treated quickly. When it comes to processing medical images, the deep learning method is essential in aiding humans in diagnosing various diseases. Classifying brain tumours is an essential step that relies heavily on the doctor’s experience and training. A smart system for detecting and classifying these tumours is essential to aid in the non-invasive diagnosis of brain tumours using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) images. This work presents a novel hybrid deep learning CNN-based structure to distinguish between three distinct types of human brain tumours through MRI scans. This paper proposes a method that employs a dual approach to classification using deep learning and CNN. The first approach combines the unsupervised classification of an SVM for pattern classification with a pre-trained CNN (i.e., SqueezeNet) for feature extraction. The second approach combines the supervised soft-max classifier with a finely tuned SqueezeNet. To evaluate the efficacy of the suggested method, MRI scans of the brain were used to analyse a total of 1937 images of glioma tumours, 926 images of meningioma tumours, 926 images of pituitary tumours, and 396 images of a normal brain. According to the experiment results, the finely tuned SqueezeNet model obtained an accuracy of 96.5%. However, when SqueezeNet was used as a feature extractor and an SVM classifier was applied, recognition accuracy increased to 98.7%.