Breast cancer detection based on histological images using fusion of diffusion model outputs

The precise detection of breast cancer in histopathological images remains a critical challenge in computational pathology, where accurate tissue segmentation significantly enhances diagnostic accuracy. This study introduces a novel approach leveraging a Conditional Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) to improve breast cancer detection through advanced segmentation and feature fusion. The method employs a conditional channel within the DDPM framework, first trained on a breast cancer histopathology dataset and extended to additional datasets to achieve regional-level segmentation of tumor areas and other tissue regions. These segmented regions, combined with predicted noise from the diffusion model and original images, are processed through an EfficientNet-B0 network to extract enhanced features. A transformer decoder then fuses these features to generate final detection results. Extensive experiments optimizing the network architecture and fusion strategies were conducted, and the proposed method was evaluated across four distinct datasets, achieving a peak accuracy of 92.86% on the BRACS dataset, 100% on the BreCaHAD dataset, 96.66% the ICIAR2018 dataset. This approach represents a significant advancement in computational pathology, offering a robust tool for breast cancer detection with potential applications in broader medical imaging contexts.