XAI-MRI: an ensemble dual-modality approach for 3D brain tumor segmentation using magnetic resonance imaging

Brain tumor segmentation from Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) presents significant challenges due to the complex nature of brain tumor tissues. This complexity poses a significant challenge in distinguishing tumor tissues from healthy tissues, particularly when radiologists rely on manual segmentation. Reliable and accurate segmentation is crucial for effective tumor grading and treatment planning. In this paper, we proposed a novel ensemble dual-modality approach for 3D brain tumor segmentation using MRI. Initially, individual U-Net models are trained and evaluated on single MRI modalities (T1, T2, T1ce, and FLAIR) to establish each modality's performance. Subsequently, we trained U-net models using combinations of the best-performing modalities to exploit the complementary information and improve segmentation accuracy. Finally, we introduced the ensemble dual-modality by combining the two best-performing pre-trained dual-modalities models to enhance segmentation performance. Experimental results show that the proposed model enhanced the segmentation result and achieved a Dice Coefficient of 97.73% and a Mean IoU of 60.08%. The results illustrate that the ensemble dual-modality approach outperforms single-modality and dual-modality models. Grad-CAM visualizations are implemented, generating heat maps that highlight tumor regions and provide useful information to clinicians about how the model made the decision, increasing their confidence in using deep learning-based systems. Our code publicly available at: https://github.com/Ahmeed-Suliman-Farhan/Ensemble-Dual-Modality-Approach.