Automating cancer diagnosis using advanced deep learning techniques for multi-cancer image classification

Abstract Cancer detection poses a significant challenge for researchers and clinical experts due to its status as the leading cause of global mortality. Early detection is crucial, but traditional cancer detection methods often rely on invasive procedures and time-consuming analyses, creating a demand for more efficient and accurate solutions. This paper addresses these challenges by utilizing automated cancer detection through AI-based techniques, specifically focusing on deep learning models. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), including DenseNet121, DenseNet201, Xception, InceptionV3, MobileNetV2, NASNetLarge, NASNetMobile, InceptionResNetV2, VGG19, and ResNet152V2, are evaluated on image datasets for seven types of cancer: brain, oral, breast, kidney, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, lung and colon, and cervical cancer. Initially, images undergo segmentation techniques, proceeded by contour feature extraction where parameters such as perimeter, area, and epsilon are computed. The models are rigorously evaluated, with DenseNet121 achieving the highest validation accuracy as 99.94%, 0.0017 as loss, and the lowest Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values as 0.036056 for training and 0.045826 for validation. These results revealed the capability of AI-based techniques in improving cancer detection accuracy, with DenseNet121 emerging as the most effective model in this study.