Fusion of Convolutional Neural Networks and Random Forests for Brain Tumor Classification in MRI Scans

Abstract

This paper proposes a combined framework of CNN+RFC to brain tumor categorization/classification using MRI (Magnetic-Resonance Imaging) images, which combines both CNN (Convolution Neural Networks) and RFC (Random Forest Classification). Preprocessing, Feature bring-out, and Categorization are the three phases of the proposed framework. In the first step, we use the Gaussian Filter Method on the data set then we combine the original data set with processed data in parallel. The feature extraction of magnetic resonance imaging was performed automatically by CNN in the second step. We also called such a type of process in this paper as non-hand-crafted feature extraction. Several classification algorithms, including RFC (Random Forest Classifier), KNN (K-Nearest Neighbor Classifier), DT (Decision Tree Classifier), SVM (Support Vector Machine Classifier), and NB (Naïve Bayes Classifier), are used in the final step. The extracted features from the CNN model are then given to the classifier algorithms, which predict Glioma tumor, Pituitary tumor, Meningioma tumor, and no tumor as a result of the testing data set. Experiments are carried out on an open data set of images selected for classification from the Kaggle databases. This data set is very complex since it contains images of brain tumor with different angles and different depths. We don't alter this data set at all. We make a separate CSV file that contains testing images' name and their specification. Using this proposed approach, we were able to achieve 99.61% accuracy on the training data set, 92.16% on the validation data, and 71.2% on the CSV/testing data.