Revolutionizing breast ultrasound diagnostics with EfficientNet-B7 and Explainable AI

Breast cancer is a leading cause of mortality among women globally, necessitating precise classification of breast ultrasound images for early diagnosis and treatment. Traditional methods using CNN architectures such as VGG, ResNet, and DenseNet, though somewhat effective, often struggle with class imbalances and subtle texture variations, leading to reduced accuracy for minority classes such as malignant tumors. To address these issues, we propose a methodology that leverages EfficientNet-B7, a scalable CNN architecture, combined with advanced data augmentation techniques to enhance minority class representation and improve model robustness. Our approach involves fine-tuning EfficientNet-B7 on the BUSI dataset, implementing RandomHorizontalFlip, RandomRotation, and ColorJitter to balance the dataset and improve model robustness. The training process includes early stopping to prevent overfitting and optimize performance metrics. Additionally, we integrate Explainable AI (XAI) techniques, such as Grad-CAM, to enhance the interpretability and transparency of the model's predictions, providing visual and quantitative insights into the features and regions of ultrasound images influencing classification outcomes. Our model achieves a classification accuracy of 99.14%, significantly outperforming existing CNN-based approaches in breast ultrasound image classification. The incorporation of XAI techniques enhances our understanding of the model's decision-making process, thereby increasing its reliability and facilitating clinical adoption. This comprehensive framework offers a robust and interpretable tool for the early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer, advancing the capabilities of automated diagnostic systems and supporting clinical decision-making processes.