A deep learning model for the localization and extraction of brain tumors from MR images using YOLOv7 and grab cut algorithm

Introduction Brain tumors are a common disease that affects millions of people worldwide. Considering the severity of brain tumors (BT), it is important to diagnose the disease in its early stages. With advancements in the diagnostic process, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has been extensively used in disease detection. However, the accurate identification of BT is a complex task, and conventional techniques are not sufficiently robust to localize and extract tumors in MRI images. Therefore, in this study, we used a deep learning model combined with a segmentation algorithm to localize and extract tumors from MR images. Method This paper presents a Deep Learning (DL)-based You Look Only Once (YOLOv7) model in combination with the Grab Cut algorithm to extract the foreground of the tumor image to enhance the detection process. YOLOv7 is used to localize the tumor region, and the Grab Cut algorithm is used to extract the tumor from the localized region. Results The performance of the YOLOv7 model with and without the Grab Cut algorithm is evaluated. The results show that the proposed approach outperforms other techniques, such as hybrid CNN-SVM, YOLOv5, and YOLOv6, in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, specificity, and F1 score. Discussion Our results show that the proposed technique achieves a high dice score between tumor-extracted images and ground truth images. The findings show that the performance of the YOLOv7 model is improved by the inclusion of the Grab Cut algorithm compared to the performance of the model without the algorithm.