ESE and Transfer Learning for Breast Tumor Classification

In this study, we proposed a lightweight neural network architecture based on inverted residual network, efficient squeeze excitation (ESE) module, and double transfer learning, called TLese-ResNet, for breast cancer molecular subtype recognition. The inverted ResNet reduces the number of network parameters while enhancing the cross-layer gradient propagation and feature expression capabilities. The introduction of the ESE module reduces the network complexity while maintaining the channel relationship collection. The dataset of this study comes from the mammography images of patients diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in a hospital in Jiangxi. The dataset comprises preoperative mammography images with CC and MLO views. Given that the dataset is somewhat small, in addition to the commonly used data augmentation methods, double transfer learning is also used. Double transfer learning includes the first transfer, in which the source domain is ImageNet and the target domain is the COVID-19 chest X-ray image dataset, and the second transfer, in which the source domain is the target domain of the first transfer, and the target domain is the mammography dataset we collected. By using five-fold cross-validation, the mean accuracy and area under received surgery feature on mammographic images of CC and MLO views were 0.818 and 0.883, respectively, outperforming other state-of-the-art deep learning-based models such as ResNet-50 and DenseNet-121. Therefore, the proposed model can provide clinicians with an effective and non-invasive auxiliary tool for molecular subtype identification of breast cancer.