Automatic detection of brain tumors with the aid of ensemble deep learning architectures and class activation map indicators by employing magnetic resonance images

Abstract

Today, as in every life-threatening disease, early diagnosis of brain tumors plays a life-saving role. The brain tumor is formed by the transformation of brain cells from their normal structures into abnormal cell structures. These formed abnormal cells begin to form in masses in the brain regions. Nowadays, many different techniques are employed to detect these tumor masses, and the most common of these techniques is Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). In this study, it is aimed to automatically detect brain tumors with the help of ensemble deep learning architectures (ResNet50, VGG19, InceptionV3 and MobileNet) and Class Activation Maps (CAMs) indicators by employing MRI images. The proposed system was implemented in three stages. In the first stage, it was determined whether there was a tumor in the MR images (Binary Approach). In the second stage, different tumor types (Normal, Glioma Tumor, Meningioma Tumor, Pituitary Tumor) were detected from MR images (Multi-class Approach). In the last stage, CAMs of each tumor group were created as an alternative tool to facilitate the work of specialists in tumor detection. The results showed that the overall accuracy of the binary approach was calculated as 100% on the ResNet50, InceptionV3 and MobileNet architectures, and 99.71% on the VGG19 architecture. Moreover, the accuracy values of 96.45% with ResNet50, 93.40% with VGG19, 85.03% with InceptionV3 and 89.34% with MobileNet architectures were obtained in the multi-class approach.