A framework for classifying breast cancer based on deep features integration and selection

Abstract

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are one of the most advanced techniques for classifying images in a range of applications. One of the most prevalent cancers that cause death in women is breast cancer. For survival rates to increase, early detection and treatment of breast cancer is essential. Deep learning (DL) can help radiologists diagnose and classify breast cancer lesions. This paper proposes a computer-aided system based on DL techniques for automatically classify breast cancer tumors in histopathological images. There are nine DCNN architectures used in this work. Four schemes are performed in the proposed framework to find the best approach. The first scheme consists of pre-trained DCNNs based on the transfer learning concept. The second scheme performs feature extraction of the DCNN architectures and uses a support vector machine (SVM) classifier for evaluation. The third one performs feature integration to show how the integrated deep features may enhance the SVM classifiers' accuracy. Finally, in the fourth scheme, the Chi-square (χ2) feature selection method is applied to reduce the large feature size in the feature integration step. The results of the proposed system present a promising performance for breast cancer classification with an accuracy of 99.24%. The system performance shows that the proposed tool is suitable to assist radiologists in diagnosing breast cancer tumors.