AI-Powered Lung Cancer Detection: Assessing VGG16 and CNN Architectures for CT Scan Image Classification

Lung cancer is a leading cause of mortality worldwide, and early detection is crucial in improving treatment outcomes and reducing death rates. However, diagnosing medical images, such as Computed Tomography scans (CT scans), is complex and requires a high level of expertise. This study focuses on developing and evaluating the performance of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models, specifically the Visual Geometry Group 16 (VGG16) architecture, to classify lung cancer CT scan images into three categories: Normal, Benign, and Malignant. The dataset used consists of 1097 CT images from 110 patients, categorized according to these severity levels. The research methodology began with data collection and preparation, followed by training and testing the VGG16 model and comparing its performance with other CNN architectures, including Residual Network with 50 layers (ResNet50), Inception Version 3 (InceptionV3), and Mobile Neural Network Version 2 (MobileNetV2). The experimental results indicate that VGG16 achieved the highest classification performance, with a Test Accuracy of 98.18%, surpassing the other models. This accuracy highlights VGG16’s strong potential as a supportive diagnostic tool in medical imaging. However, a limitation of this study is the dataset size, which may reduce model accuracy when applied to new data. Future studies should consider increasing the dataset size, using Data Augmentation techniques, fine-tuning model parameters, and employing advanced models such as 3D CNN or Vision Transformers. Additionally, incorporating Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM) to interpret model decisions would enhance transparency and reliability. This study confirms the potential of CNNs, particularly VGG16, for classifying lung cancer CT images and provides a foundation for further development in medical applications.