A Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Brain Tumors Using a Fine-Tuned YOLO-based Model with Transfer Learning

Abstract

This paper proposes transfer learning and fine-tuning techniques for a deep learning model to detect three distinct brain tumors from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans. In this work, the recent YOLOv4 model trained using a collection of 3064 T1-weighted Contrast-Enhanced (CE)-MRI scans that were pre-processed and labeled for the task. This work trained with the partial 29-layer YOLOv4-Tiny and fine-tuned to work optimally and run efficiently in most platforms with reliable performance. With the help of transfer learning, the model had initial leverage to train faster with pre-trained weights from the COCO dataset, generating a robust set of features required for brain tumor detection. The results yielded the highest mean average precision of 93.14%, a 90.34% precision, 88.58% recall, and 89.45% F1-Score outperforming other previous versions of the YOLO detection models and other studies that used bounding box detections for the same task like Faster R-CNN. As concluded, the YOLOv4-Tiny can work efficiently to detect brain tumors automatically at a rapid phase with the help of proper fine-tuning and transfer learning. This work contributes mainly to assist medical experts in the diagnostic process of brain tumors.