A Transfer Learning Approach with a Convolutional Neural Network for the Classification of Lung Carcinoma

ExtRanFS: An Automated Lung Cancer Malignancy Detection System Using Extremely Randomized Feature Selector

Lung cancer is an abnormality where the body's cells multiply uncontrollably. The disease can be deadly if not detected in the initial stage. To address this issue, an automated lung cancer malignancy detection (ExtRanFS) framework is developed using transfer learning. We used the IQ-OTH/NCCD dataset gathered from the Iraq Hospital in 2019, encompassing CT scans of patients suffering from various lung cancers and healthy subjects. The annotated dataset consists of CT slices from 110 patients, of which 40 were diagnosed with malignant tumors and 15 with benign tumors. Fifty-five patients were determined to be in good health. All CT images are in DICOM format with a 1mm slice thickness, consisting of 80 to 200 slices at various sides and angles. The proposed system utilized a convolution-based pre-trained VGG16 model as the feature extractor and an Extremely Randomized Tree Classifier as the feature selector. The selected features are fed to the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) Classifier for detecting whether the lung cancer is benign, malignant, or normal. The accuracy, sensitivity, and F1-Score of the proposed framework are 99.09%, 98.33%, and 98.33%, respectively. To evaluate the proposed model, a comparison is performed with other pre-trained models as feature extractors and also with the existing state-of-the-art methodologies as classifiers. From the experimental results, it is evident that the proposed framework outperformed other existing methodologies. This work would be beneficial to both the practitioners and the patients in identifying whether the tumor is benign, malignant, or normal.

Medical image data augmentation: techniques, comparisons and interpretations

Designing deep learning based methods with medical images has always been an attractive area of research to assist clinicians in rapid examination and accurate diagnosis. Those methods need a large number of datasets including all variations in their training stages. On the other hand, medical images are always scarce due to several reasons, such as not enough patients for some diseases, patients do not want to allow their images to be used, lack of medical equipment or equipment, inability to obtain images that meet the desired criteria. This issue leads to bias in datasets, overfitting, and inaccurate results. Data augmentation is a common solution to overcome this issue and various augmentation techniques have been applied to different types of images in the literature. However, it is not clear which data augmentation technique provides more efficient results for which image type since different diseases are handled, different network architectures are used, and these architectures are trained and tested with different numbers of data sets in the literature. Therefore, in this work, the augmentation techniques used to improve performances of deep learning based diagnosis of the diseases in different organs (brain, lung, breast, and eye) from different imaging modalities (MR, CT, mammography, and fundoscopy) have been examined. Also, the most commonly used augmentation methods have been implemented, and their effectiveness in classifications with a deep network has been discussed based on quantitative performance evaluations. Experiments indicated that augmentation techniques should be chosen carefully according to image types.

Multiround Transfer Learning and Modified Generative Adversarial Network for Lung Cancer Detection

Lung cancer has been the leading cause of cancer death for many decades. With the advent of artificial intelligence, various machine learning models have been proposed for lung cancer detection (LCD). Typically, challenges in building an accurate LCD model are the small-scale datasets, the poor generalizability to detect unseen data, and the selection of useful source domains and prioritization of multiple source domains for transfer learning. In this paper, a multiround transfer learning and modified generative adversarial network (MTL-MGAN) algorithm is proposed for LCD. The MTL transfers the knowledge between the prioritized source domains and target domain to get rid of exhaust search of datasets prioritization among multiple datasets, maximizing the transferability with a multiround transfer learning process, and avoiding negative transfer via customization of loss functions in the aspects of domain, instance, and feature. In regard to the MGAN, it not only generates additional training data but also creates intermediate domains to bridge the gap between the source domains and target domains. 10 benchmark datasets are chosen for the performance evaluation and analysis of the MTL-MGAN. The proposed algorithm has significantly improved the accuracy compared with related works. To examine the contributions of the individual components of the MTL-MGAN, ablation studies are conducted to confirm the effectiveness of the prioritization algorithm, the MTL, the negative transfer avoidance via loss functions, and the MGAN. The research implications are to confirm the feasibility of multiround transfer learning to enhance the optimal solution of the target model and to provide a generic approach to bridge the gap between the source domain and target domain using MGAN.

The Role of Machine Learning and Deep Learning Approaches for the Detection of Skin Cancer

Machine learning (ML) can enhance a dermatologist's work, from diagnosis to customized care. The development of ML algorithms in dermatology has been supported lately regarding links to digital data processing (e.g., electronic medical records, Image Archives, omics), quicker computing and cheaper data storage. This article describes the fundamentals of ML-based implementations, as well as future limits and concerns for the production of skin cancer detection and classification systems. We also explored five fields of dermatology using deep learning applications: (1) the classification of diseases by clinical photos, (2) der moto pathology visual classification of cancer, and (3) the measurement of skin diseases by smartphone applications and personal tracking systems. This analysis aims to provide dermatologists with a guide that helps demystify the basics of ML and its different applications to identify their possible challenges correctly. This paper surveyed studies on skin cancer detection using deep learning to assess the features and advantages of other techniques. Moreover, this paper also defined the basic requirements for creating a skin cancer detection application, which revolves around two main issues: the full segmentation image and the tracking of the lesion on the skin using deep learning. Most of the techniques found in this survey address these two problems. Some of the methods also categorize the type of cancer too.

Repetition-Based Approach for Task Adaptation in Imitation Learning

Transfer learning is an effective approach for adapting an autonomous agent to a new target task by transferring knowledge learned from the previously learned source task. The major problem with traditional transfer learning is that it only focuses on optimizing learning performance on the target task. Thus, the performance on the target task may be improved in exchange for the deterioration of the source task's performance, resulting in an agent that is not able to revisit the earlier task. Therefore, transfer learning methods are still far from being comparable with the learning capability of humans, as humans can perform well on both source and new target tasks. In order to address this limitation, a task adaptation method for imitation learning is proposed in this paper. Being inspired by the idea of repetition learning in neuroscience, the proposed adaptation method enables the agent to repeatedly review the learned knowledge of the source task, while learning the new knowledge of the target task. This ensures that the learning performance on the target task is high, while the deterioration of the learning performance on the source task is small. A comprehensive evaluation over several simulated tasks with varying difficulty levels shows that the proposed method can provide high and consistent performance on both source and target tasks, outperforming existing transfer learning methods.

Detection of Skin Cancer Based on Skin Lesion Images Using Deep Learning

An increasing number of genetic and metabolic anomalies have been determined to lead to cancer, generally fatal. Cancerous cells may spread to any body part, where they can be life-threatening. Skin cancer is one of the most common types of cancer, and its frequency is increasing worldwide. The main subtypes of skin cancer are squamous and basal cell carcinomas, and melanoma, which is clinically aggressive and responsible for most deaths. Therefore, skin cancer screening is necessary. One of the best methods to accurately and swiftly identify skin cancer is using deep learning (DL). In this research, the deep learning method convolution neural network (CNN) was used to detect the two primary types of tumors, malignant and benign, using the ISIC2018 dataset. This dataset comprises 3533 skin lesions, including benign, malignant, nonmelanocytic, and melanocytic tumors. Using ESRGAN, the photos were first retouched and improved. The photos were augmented, normalized, and resized during the preprocessing step. Skin lesion photos could be classified using a CNN method based on an aggregate of results obtained after many repetitions. Then, multiple transfer learning models, such as Resnet50, InceptionV3, and Inception Resnet, were used for fine-tuning. In addition to experimenting with several models (the designed CNN, Resnet50, InceptionV3, and Inception Resnet), this study’s innovation and contribution are the use of ESRGAN as a preprocessing step. Our designed model showed results comparable to the pretrained model. Simulations using the ISIC 2018 skin lesion dataset showed that the suggested strategy was successful. An 83.2% accuracy rate was achieved by the CNN, in comparison to the Resnet50 (83.7%), InceptionV3 (85.8%), and Inception Resnet (84%) models.