Breast cancer detection and classification via a robust deep learning approach

This work presents a leakage-controlled deep-learning framework for breast cancer classification using the CBIS-DDSM mammography archive. The proposed pipeline combines patient-level data partitioning before augmentation, a two-stage transfer-learning strategy based on ResNet50, and an Inter-View Attention Fusion (IVAF) module for adaptive fusion of paired craniocaudal (CC) and mediolateral oblique (MLO) feature maps. IVAF was modeled as a light-weighted convolutional gating strategy added after the last ResNet50 convolutional layer in order to create a weighted spatial-channel representation from the paired mammography images. In terms of the performance of the model under CBIS-DDSM held-out testing protocol, the entire model scored an accuracy of 97.12%, sensitivity of 96.44%, specificity of 97.68%, and AUC-ROC of 0.9876 based on the test results obtained on 6,117 images of 222 different patients. The average accuracy obtained using 100 random seeds was found to be 97.11% ± 0.18%.