Evaluation of Integrated CNN, Transfer Learning, and BN with Thermography for Breast Cancer Detection

Breast cancer comprises a serious public health concern. The three primary techniques for detecting breast cancer are ultrasound, mammography, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, the existing methods of diagnosis are not practical for regular mass screening at short time intervals. Thermography could be a solution to this issue because it is a non-invasive and low-cost method that can be used routinely as a self-screening method. The research significance of this work lies in the implementation and integration of multiple different AI techniques for achieving diagnosis based on breast thermograms from several data sources. The data sources contain 306 images. The concept of transfer learning with several pre-trained models is implemented. Bayesian Networks (BNs) are also used to have interpretability of the diagnosis. A novel feature extraction from images (related to temperature) has been implemented and feeds the BNs. Finally, all methods and the classification results of pre-trained models are compared. It is found that the best result amongst the transfer learning concept is achieved with MobileNet, which delivered 93.8% accuracy. Furthermore, the BN achieves an accuracy of 90.20%, and finally, the expert model that combines CNNs and BNs gives an accuracy of 90.85%, even with a limited amount of data available. The integration of CNN and BN aims to overcome the hardship of interpretability. These approaches demonstrate high performance with added interpretability compared to previous works. In conclusion, the deep neural network provides promising results in breast cancer detection. It could be an ideal candidate for Breast Self-Exam (BSE), the goal recommended by WHO for mass screening.