Developing a Supplementary Diagnostic Tool for Breast Cancer Risk Estimation Using Ensemble Transfer Learning

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer worldwide. Thus, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of the medical workflow of the disease. Therefore, this study aims to develop a supplementary diagnostic tool for radiologists using ensemble transfer learning and digital mammograms. The digital mammograms and their associated information were collected from the department of radiology and pathology at Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia. Thirteen pre-trained networks were selected and tested in this study. ResNet101V2 and ResNet152 had the highest mean PR-AUC, MobileNetV3Small and ResNet152 had the highest mean precision, ResNet101 had the highest mean F1 score, and ResNet152 and ResNet152V2 had the highest mean Youden J index. Subsequently, three ensemble models were developed using the top three pre-trained networks whose ranking was based on PR-AUC values, precision, and F1 scores. The final ensemble model, which consisted of Resnet101, Resnet152, and ResNet50V2, had a mean precision value, F1 score, and Youden J index of 0.82, 0.68, and 0.12, respectively. Additionally, the final model demonstrated balanced performance across mammographic density. In conclusion, this study demonstrates the good performance of ensemble transfer learning and digital mammograms in breast cancer risk estimation. This model can be utilised as a supplementary diagnostic tool for radiologists, thus reducing their workloads and further improving the medical workflow in the screening and diagnosis of breast cancer.