Transfer learning based deep architecture for lung cancer classification using CT image with pattern and entropy based feature set

Early detection of lung cancer, which remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide, is important for improved prognosis, and CT scanning is an important diagnostic modality. Lung cancer classification according to CT scan is challenging since the disease is characterized by very variable features. A hybrid deep architecture, ILN-TL-DM, is presented in this paper for precise classification of lung cancer from CT scan images. Initially, an Adaptive Gaussian filtering method is applied during pre-processing to eliminate noise and enhance the quality of the CT image. This is followed by an Improved Attention-based ResU-Net (P-ResU-Net) model being utilized during the segmentation process to accurately isolate the lung and tumor areas from the remaining image. During the process of feature extraction, various features are derived from the segmented images, such as Local Gabor Transitional Pattern (LGTrP), Pyramid of Histograms of Oriented Gradients (PHOG), deep features and improved entropy-based features, all intended to improve the representation of the tumor areas. Finally, classification exploits a hybrid deep learning architecture integrating an improved LeNet structure with Transfer Learning (ILN-TL) and a DeepMaxout (DM) structure. Both model outputs are finally merged with the help of a soft voting strategy, which results in the final classification result that separates cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. The strategy greatly enhances lung cancer detection's accuracy and strength, showcasing how combining sophisticated neural network structures with feature engineering and ensemble methods could be used to achieve better medical image classification. The ILN-TL-DM model consistently outperforms the conventional methods with greater accuracy (0.962), specificity (0.955) and NPV (0.964).