Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of mortality among women across the world. Earlier screening of BC can significantly reduce the mortality rate and assist the diagnostic process to increase the survival rate. Researchers employ deep learning (DL) techniques to detect BC using mammogram images. However, these techniques are resource-intensive, leading to implementation complexities in real-life environments. The performance of convolutional neural network (CNN) models depends on the quality of mammogram images. Thus, this study aimed to build a model to detect BC using a DL technique. Image preprocessing techniques were used to enhance image quality. The authors developed a CNN model using the EfficientNet B7 model's weights to extract the image features. Multi-class classification of BC images was performed using the LightGBM model. The Optuna algorithm was used to fine-tune LightGBM for image classification. In addition, a quantization-aware training (QAT) strategy was followed to implement the proposed model in a resource-constrained environment. The authors generalized the proposed model using the CBIS-DDSM and CMMD datasets. Additionally, they combined these two datasets to ensure the model's generalizability to diverse images. The experimental findings revealed that the suggested BC detection model produced a promising result. The proposed BC detection model obtained an accuracy of 99.4%, 99.9%, and 97.0%, and Kappa (K) values of 96.9%, 96.9%, and 94.1% in the CBIS-DDSM, CMMD, and combined datasets. The recommended model streamlined the BC detection process in order to achieve an exceptional outcome. It can be deployed in a real-life environment to support physicians in making effective decisions. Graph convolutional networks can be used to improve the performance of the proposed model.
Keywords: EfficientNet; breast cancer; deep learning; ensemble learning; feature engineering.