Browser-Based Multi-Cancer Classification Framework Using Depthwise Separable Convolutions for Precision Diagnostics
<b>Background</b>: Early and accurate cancer detection remains a critical challenge in global healthcare. Deep learning has shown strong diagnostic potential, yet widespread adoption is limited by dependence on high-performance hardware, centralized servers, and data-privacy risks. <b>Methods</b>: This study introduces a browser-based multi-cancer classification framework that performs real-time, client-side inference using TensorFlow.js-eliminating the need for external servers or specialized GPUs. The proposed model fine-tunes the Xception architecture, leveraging depthwise separable convolutions for efficient feature extraction, on a large multi-cancer dataset of over 130,000 histopathological and cytological images spanning 26 cancer types. It was benchmarked against VGG16, ResNet50, EfficientNet-B0, and Vision Transformer. <b>Results</b>: The model achieved a Top-1 accuracy of 99.85% and Top-5 accuracy of 100%, surpassing all comparators while maintaining lightweight computational requirements. Grad-CAM visualizations confirmed that predictions were guided by histopathologically relevant regions, reinforcing interpretability and clinical trust. <b>Conclusions</b>: This work represents the first fully browser-deployable, privacy-preserving deep learning framework for multi-cancer diagnosis, demonstrating that high-accuracy AI can be achieved without infrastructure overhead. It establishes a practical pathway for equitable, cost-effective global deployment of medical AI tools.
Authors
- Oluwamayowa Akinsuyi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4922-9055)
- Ikenna Odezuligbo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-7633-6862)
- Divine Sebukpor
- Maimuna Nagey
- Michael Chukwuka
- Blessing Ndubuisi
Institutions
- Chandigarh University (IN)
- Concordia University Wisconsin (US)
- Creighton University (US)
- University of Wisconsin System (US)
- University of Kansas (US)
- CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center - Bergan Mercy (US)
- University of Florida (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Diagnostics
- Published
- 2025-12-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics15233066
- Primary Topic
- AI in cancer detection
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00