Work

Deep Learning Approaches for Brain Tumor Classification in MRI Scans: An Analysis of Model Interpretability

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This work presents the development and evaluation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models for the automatic classification of brain tumors in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans. Several deep learning architectures were implemented and compared, including VGG-19, ResNet50, EfficientNetB3, Xception, MobileNetV2, DenseNet201, InceptionV3, Vision Transformer (ViT), and an Ensemble model. The models were developed in Python (version 3.12.4) using the Keras and TensorFlow frameworks and trained on a public Brain Tumor MRI dataset containing 7023 images. Data augmentation and hyperparameter optimization techniques were applied to improve model generalization. The results showed high classification performance, with accuracies ranging from 89.47% to 98.17%. The Vision Transformer achieved the best performance, reaching 98.17% accuracy, outperforming traditional Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures. Explainable AI (XAI) methods Grad-CAM, LIME, and Occlusion Sensitivity were employed to assess model interpretability, showing that the models predominantly focused on tumor regions. The proposed approach demonstrated the effectiveness of AI-based systems in supporting early diagnosis of brain tumors, reducing analysis time and assisting healthcare professionals.

Source: Applied Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/app16020831

Authors: Emanuela F. Gomes, Ramiro S. Barbosa

Institutions: Universidade Técnica do Porto, Grupo de Investigação em Engenharia e Computação Inteligente para a Inovação e o Desenvolvimento

Language: English

Topic: Brain Tumor Detection and Classification

Subfield: Neurology

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896