Spotting Brain Tumors Early: A Smart Teamwork Approach

Brain tumors are sneaky. They can hide in MRI scans, making it tough for doctors to spot them early. This is a big deal because catching them early can make a huge difference in treatment success. Deep learning models have been trying to help, but they face some serious hurdles. These include not having enough varied data, having more of one type of tumor than another, and being a bit of a black box—meaning they're not always clear about how they make decisions. One clever solution is to use a team of models working together. This approach combines the strengths of different models to better spot and classify brain tumors. The team includes EfficientNetB0, MobileNetV2, GoogleNet, and a Multi-level CapsuleNet. They all work together with a meta-learner called CatBoost. This setup helps to capture the complex details of tumors while making the process more understandable and reliable. To make this teamwork even better, a large and diverse set of MRI data was created. This was done by combining data from four different sources: BraTS, Msoud, Br35H, and SARTAJ. To handle the issue of having more of one type of tumor than another, techniques like Borderline-SMOTE and data augmentation were used. Additionally, feature extraction methods, along with PCA and Gray Wolf Optimization, were employed to improve the model's performance. The model's effectiveness was put to the test using confidence interval analysis and statistical tests. It showed impressive results, with high F1 scores and PR AUC values on two different datasets. This means it's really good at accurately spotting brain tumors. Plus, it outperformed other state-of-the-art models, including CNNs and Vision Transformers. But here's where it gets even more interesting. The creators didn't stop at just building a great model. They also developed a web-based tool. This tool lets doctors interact with the model and see the key areas in MRI scans that helped make the diagnosis. This is a big step towards making AI more useful in real-world medical settings. It shows how high-performing AI models can be connected to practical clinical applications, providing a reliable and efficient way to diagnose brain tumors.