PrecisionLymphoNet: Advancing Malignant Lymphoma Diagnosis via Ensemble Transfer Learning with CNNs

Diagnostics (Basel). 2024 Feb 21;14(5):469. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics14050469.

Abstract

Malignant lymphoma, which impacts the lymphatic system, presents diverse challenges in accurate diagnosis due to its varied subtypes-chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), follicular lymphoma (FL), and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Lymphoma is a form of cancer that begins in the lymphatic system, impacting lymphocytes, which are a specific type of white blood cell. This research addresses these challenges by proposing ensemble and non-ensemble transfer learning models employing pre-trained weights from VGG16, VGG19, DenseNet201, InceptionV3, and Xception. For the ensemble technique, this paper adopts a stack-based ensemble approach. It is a two-level classification approach and best suited for accuracy improvement. Testing on a multiclass dataset of CLL, FL, and MCL reveals exceptional diagnostic accuracy, with DenseNet201, InceptionV3, and Xception exceeding 90% accuracy. The proposed ensemble model, leveraging InceptionV3 and Xception, achieves an outstanding 99% accuracy over 300 epochs, surpassing previous prediction methods. This study demonstrates the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed approach, showcasing its potential in real-world medical applications for precise lymphoma diagnosis.

Keywords: DenseNet201; Inceptionv3; Xception; chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL); ensemble technique; follicular lymphoma (FL); malignant lymphoma; mantle cell lymphoma (MCL); transfer learning.

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.