Transfer-Learning Approach for Enhanced Brain Tumor Classification in MRI Imaging

Background: Intracranial neoplasm, often referred to as a brain tumor, is an abnormal growth or mass of tissues in the brain. The complexity of the brain and the associated diagnostic delays cause significant stress for patients. This study aims to enhance the efficiency of MRI analysis for brain tumors using deep transfer learning. Methods: We developed and evaluated the performance of five pre-trained deep learning models—ResNet50, Xception, EfficientNetV2-S, ResNet152V2, and VGG16—using a publicly available MRI scan dataset to classify images as glioma, meningioma, pituitary, or no tumor. Various classification metrics were used for evaluation. Results: Our findings indicate that these models can improve the accuracy of MRI analysis for brain tumor classification, with the Xception model achieving the highest performance with a test F1 score of 0.9817, followed by EfficientNetV2-S with a test F1 score of 0.9629. Conclusions: Implementing pre-trained deep learning models can enhance MRI accuracy for detecting brain tumors.