XDecompo: Explainable Decomposition Approach in Convolutional Neural Networks for Tumour Image Classification

Of the various tumour types, colorectal cancer and brain tumours are still considered among the most serious and deadly diseases in the world. Therefore, many researchers are interested in improving the accuracy and reliability of diagnostic medical machine learning models. In computer-aided diagnos...

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Main Authors: Asmaa Abbas, Mohamed Medhat Gaber, Mohammed M. Abdelsamea
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-12-01
Series:Sensors
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/22/24/9875
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author Asmaa Abbas
Mohamed Medhat Gaber
Mohammed M. Abdelsamea
author_facet Asmaa Abbas
Mohamed Medhat Gaber
Mohammed M. Abdelsamea
author_sort Asmaa Abbas
collection DOAJ
description Of the various tumour types, colorectal cancer and brain tumours are still considered among the most serious and deadly diseases in the world. Therefore, many researchers are interested in improving the accuracy and reliability of diagnostic medical machine learning models. In computer-aided diagnosis, self-supervised learning has been proven to be an effective solution when dealing with datasets with insufficient data annotations. However, medical image datasets often suffer from data irregularities, making the recognition task even more challenging. The class decomposition approach has provided a robust solution to such a challenging problem by simplifying the learning of class boundaries of a dataset. In this paper, we propose a robust self-supervised model, called <i>XDecompo</i>, to improve the transferability of features from the pretext task to the downstream task. <i>XDecompo</i> has been designed based on an affinity propagation-based class decomposition to effectively encourage learning of the class boundaries in the downstream task. <i>XDecompo</i> has an explainable component to highlight important pixels that contribute to classification and explain the effect of class decomposition on improving the speciality of extracted features. We also explore the generalisability of <i>XDecompo</i> in handling different medical datasets, such as histopathology for colorectal cancer and brain tumour images. The quantitative results demonstrate the robustness of <i>XDecompo</i> with high accuracy of 96.16% and 94.30% for CRC and brain tumour images, respectively. <i>XDecompo</i> has demonstrated its generalization capability and achieved high classification accuracy (both quantitatively and qualitatively) in different medical image datasets, compared with other models. Moreover, a post hoc explainable method has been used to validate the feature transferability, demonstrating highly accurate feature representations.
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spelling doaj.art-114962329ce74a43bc08cc1df6b6eded2023-11-24T17:56:46ZengMDPI AGSensors1424-82202022-12-012224987510.3390/s22249875XDecompo: Explainable Decomposition Approach in Convolutional Neural Networks for Tumour Image ClassificationAsmaa Abbas0Mohamed Medhat Gaber1Mohammed M. Abdelsamea2School of Computing and Digital Technology, Birmingham City University, Birmingham B4 7AP, UKSchool of Computing and Digital Technology, Birmingham City University, Birmingham B4 7AP, UKSchool of Computing and Digital Technology, Birmingham City University, Birmingham B4 7AP, UKOf the various tumour types, colorectal cancer and brain tumours are still considered among the most serious and deadly diseases in the world. Therefore, many researchers are interested in improving the accuracy and reliability of diagnostic medical machine learning models. In computer-aided diagnosis, self-supervised learning has been proven to be an effective solution when dealing with datasets with insufficient data annotations. However, medical image datasets often suffer from data irregularities, making the recognition task even more challenging. The class decomposition approach has provided a robust solution to such a challenging problem by simplifying the learning of class boundaries of a dataset. In this paper, we propose a robust self-supervised model, called <i>XDecompo</i>, to improve the transferability of features from the pretext task to the downstream task. <i>XDecompo</i> has been designed based on an affinity propagation-based class decomposition to effectively encourage learning of the class boundaries in the downstream task. <i>XDecompo</i> has an explainable component to highlight important pixels that contribute to classification and explain the effect of class decomposition on improving the speciality of extracted features. We also explore the generalisability of <i>XDecompo</i> in handling different medical datasets, such as histopathology for colorectal cancer and brain tumour images. The quantitative results demonstrate the robustness of <i>XDecompo</i> with high accuracy of 96.16% and 94.30% for CRC and brain tumour images, respectively. <i>XDecompo</i> has demonstrated its generalization capability and achieved high classification accuracy (both quantitatively and qualitatively) in different medical image datasets, compared with other models. Moreover, a post hoc explainable method has been used to validate the feature transferability, demonstrating highly accurate feature representations.https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/22/24/9875explainable artificial intelligenceconvolutional neural networksmedical images classificationunsupervised pre-trainingdata irregularities
spellingShingle Asmaa Abbas
Mohamed Medhat Gaber
Mohammed M. Abdelsamea
XDecompo: Explainable Decomposition Approach in Convolutional Neural Networks for Tumour Image Classification
Sensors
explainable artificial intelligence
convolutional neural networks
medical images classification
unsupervised pre-training
data irregularities
title XDecompo: Explainable Decomposition Approach in Convolutional Neural Networks for Tumour Image Classification
title_full XDecompo: Explainable Decomposition Approach in Convolutional Neural Networks for Tumour Image Classification
title_fullStr XDecompo: Explainable Decomposition Approach in Convolutional Neural Networks for Tumour Image Classification
title_full_unstemmed XDecompo: Explainable Decomposition Approach in Convolutional Neural Networks for Tumour Image Classification
title_short XDecompo: Explainable Decomposition Approach in Convolutional Neural Networks for Tumour Image Classification
title_sort xdecompo explainable decomposition approach in convolutional neural networks for tumour image classification
topic explainable artificial intelligence
convolutional neural networks
medical images classification
unsupervised pre-training
data irregularities
url https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/22/24/9875
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AT mohamedmedhatgaber xdecompoexplainabledecompositionapproachinconvolutionalneuralnetworksfortumourimageclassification
AT mohammedmabdelsamea xdecompoexplainabledecompositionapproachinconvolutionalneuralnetworksfortumourimageclassification