Received: 11 July 2019 Revised: 25 December 2019 Accepted: 16 January 2020

DOI: 10.1002/ima.22400

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Deep learning and optimization algorithms for automatic

breast cancer detection

Zijun Sha1 | Lin Hu2 | Babak Daneshvar Rouyendegh3

1
Honda R&D Co., Ltd., Wako-shi,
Saitama, Japan
Abstract
2
AZAPA Co., Ltd, Tokyo, Japan Breast cancer is caused by the abnormal and rapid growth of breast cells. An
3
Department of Industrial Engineering, early diagnosis can ensure an easier and effective treatment. A mass in the
Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University breast is a significant early sign of breast cancer, even though differentiating
(AYBU), Ankara, Turkey
the cancerous mass's tissue from normal tissue for diagnosis is a difficult task
Correspondence for radiologists. The development of computer-aided detection systems in
Lin Hu, AZAPA Co., Ltd., Tokyo recent years has led to nondestructive and efficient cancer diagnostic tech-
105-0013, Japan.
Email: 2528265908@qq.com niques. This paper proposes a comprehensive method to locate the cancerous
region in the mammogram image. This method employs image noise reduc-
tion, optimal image segmentation based on the convolutional neural network,
a grasshopper optimization algorithm, and optimized feature extraction and
feature selection based on the grasshopper optimization algorithm, thereby
improving precision and decreasing the computational cost. This method was
applied to the Mammographic Image Analysis Society Digital Mammogram
Database and Digital Database for Screening Mammography breast cancer
databases and the simulation results were compared with 10 different state-of-
the-art methods to analyze the proposed system's efficiency. Final results
showed that the proposed method had 96% Sensitivity, 93% Specificity, 85%
PPV, 97% NPV, 92% accuracy, and better efficiency than other traditional
methods in terms of Sensitivity, Specificity, PPV, NPV, and Accuracy.

KEYWORDS
breast cancer, convolutional neural networks, feature extraction, feature selection, grasshopper
optimization algorithm, image classification, image segmentation

1 | INTRODUCTION Breast cancer occurs among both women and men,

The human body is made up of minute cells that are visi-
ble only through the microscope. Generally, cells contin-
uously reproduce to replace old and dead cells. Cell
proliferation is characterized by uniform behavior where
cell growth is as required by the body. When the growth
of the cells is out of control, a large number of new cells
are produced which are cancerous and this gradually
forms a tumor.
although women account for over 99% of the cases. Breast
cancer is the second most common among women and
the second most widespread in the world. Every year,
more than 11 000 women worldwide die and 6% of the
world's total mortality can be attributed to breast cancer.1,2
Breast cancer under the age of 30 years is less preva-
lent. Predisposing factors of breast cancer include high
age, familial history, infertility, first pregnancy over
30 years of age, consumption of foods containing high

Int J Imaging Syst Technol. 2020;1–12. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ima © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1
2 SHA ET AL.
animal fat, and so on. Many patients do not have any clini-
cal symptoms at an early stage, and the disease is identi-
fied by the surgeon's examination and mammography.3
When significant signs for cancer in the patient are
not noticeable, it is necessary to follow up with the exam-
iner and undergo diagnostic procedures like mammogra-
phy to diagnose cancer. This helps with early detection of
cancerous cells, and hence, the probability of a successful
treatment is higher.
Mammography is the most commonly used diagnostic
test by radiologists to diagnose and screen breast cancer.
The use of a mammogram reduces mortality by up to
25%. It is difficult to interpret and describe the mammog-
raphy images, and the official US National Cancer Insti-
tute states that 10% to 30% of the glands in the patient's
breast are not recognized by the radiologist through a
mammogram.
In recent decades, extensive research has been per-
formed to reduce diagnostic errors of breast cancer and to
increase the speed of diagnosis. The results of this research
can help radiologists and specialists with a rapid diagnosis.
Image processing techniques and introducing pattern rec-
ognition for automatic diagnosis and detection of breast
cancer from mammogram images can reduce human
errors and increase the speed of diagnosis. As the reasons
for breast cancer cannot be completely defined, it cannot
be prevented. Early diagnosis can increase the chance of
complete recovery, although breast cancer in most cases
cannot be recognized until the advanced stage.4
The statistics of breast cancer survivors can be
improved if rapid diagnostics are employed. Mammogra-
phy overcomes the setbacks of other methods. The results
of the American Cancer Society on 280 000 American
women demonstrated that imaging, clinical examina-
tions, breast cancer screening, and mammography enable
early diagnosis of breast cancer and that mammography
can identify more than 41% of cancer patients.5
Several studies are carried out to show that the early
diagnosis of breast cancer can increase the chance of cure.
Recently, the research on non-destructive experi-
ments to diagnose breast cancer has increased. The
suggested methods can be performed without involving
the patient by using various techniques, especially image
processing and computer programming.6-8 A significant
part of breast cancer diagnosis in digital image processing
is in precisely locating the cancerous area.
New methods for diagnosing breast cancer, especially
non-invasive diagnostic tools, have been discovered in
various laboratories. The methods are based on different
digital photography techniques like optical coherence
tomography,9 multispectral,10 and dermoscopy.11
These methods have their advantages and shortcom-
ings which compromise accuracy and efficiency for cost
efficiency and ease of use. Recently, the use of Computer-
aided Design (CAD) methods is employed for diagnosing
cancer with a Non-destructive Test with minimum error.
Image classification is the final stage of image
processing and is a relatively difficult process, that is,
after image pre-processing, image segmentation, image
feature extraction, and image classification are carried
out. The purpose of image classification is to separate the
original input image into predefined classes.
The quality of the final categorization depends on the
results of all the steps in image processing. The use of
computer-aided detection helps radiologists analyze and
highlight the suspicious cancerous regions that improve the
cancer detection rate.12 This methodology improves the can-
cer detection rate by considering a two-step guaranteed sys-
tem to help the radiologist decrease human error.13,14
Mammography is an important part of cancer detec-
tion as selecting a precise method to detect the cancerous
region influences the diagnosis. Human error is unavoid-
able, and in some cases, even the most experienced radi-
ologists make mistakes when analyzing the image,15
though many precautions are taken to cover this short-
coming.16-18 In 2016, Spanhol et al presented a technique
for automatic cancer diagnosis of histopathological
images using convolutional neural networks (CNNs).19
Simulation results analyzed the system's precision and
compared it with the other popular methods. Different
configurations for the method were applied for the recog-
nition rates.
In 2015, Liu et al presented a new methodology for
automatic breast cancer tissue detection based on false-
positive reduction.20 The multiple concentric layers tech-
nology was used to locate the suspicious areas after
which the narrowband-based active contour was used to
improve the segmentation accuracy of the cancerous
mass. The regions of interest (ROI) method for the seg-
mented suspicious regions was used to extract the texture
and geometric features and was evaluated by a gray-level
co-occurrence matrix and completed local binary pattern.
Finally, a support vector machine (SVM) was trained
under the supervision of a radiologist to classify the
results. Experimental results showed higher sensitivity
compared with previous methods.
In 2016, Gu et al introduced a method for automatic
image segmentation of the 3D ultrasound breast cancer
images, where images were categorized according to the
majority of its tissue components.21 Simulation results
showed high efficiency of the proposed method to other
methods and manual diagnosis.
In 2016, Wang et al proposed a different technique for
cell nuclei detection in breast cancer images. The tech-
nique employed a Region of Interest (ROI)-based proce-
dure for accurate diagnosis of breast cancer images. The
SHA ET AL.
method is a hybrid of the Curvature Scale Space (CSS)
method and the mathematical morphology. Wrapper fea-
tures were utilized for improving system accuracy. The
final results showed 91.64% precision for this
technique.22
In 2018, an improved version of the k-nearest neigh-
borhood was proposed by Li et al. This method, called
the entropy weighted local-hyperplane knn, was used to
diagnose the cancerous regions in the mammogram. Sim-
ulation results showed a 92.33% precision rate.23
In 2018, Al-antari et al proposed a deep learning-
based method for the automatic diagnosis of breast can-
cer in digital mammograms.24 The method was based on
a deep belief network (DBN) that automatically detects
breast tissue areas and detects the benign and malignant
regions. Two ROI methods were utilized: whole mass
ROIs and multiple mass ROIs. They used linear discrimi-
nant analysis, neural network, and quadratic discrimi-
nant analysis for classification. The final results were
compared with other methods and showed good achieve-
ments for the DBN.
In 2019, Nayak et al presented an automatic method
for breast tissue diagnosis based on an efficient watershed
algorithm.25 The watershed method is a popular method
for contour-based feature extraction and region segmen-
tation that makes it an efficient breast tissue segmenta-
tion method. The proposed method is tested with the
well-known breast cancer database, Mammographic
Image Analysis Society Digital Mammogram Database
(MIAS) and Digital Database for Screening Mammogra-
phy (DDSM), and the results were compared with other
state-of-the-art techniques available in the literature.
In recent years, the applications of computational intelli-
gence have extensively increased. Computational intelligence
includes different techniques like neural networks,26-30 fuzzy
methods,31-35 and optimization algorithms.36-40 Meta-
heuristics are a part of optimization algorithms that can opti-
mize the segmentation and classification methods.
In 2015, Bhardwaj and Tiwari presented a modified
neural network to design an optimal breast cancer diagno-
sis system using a genetic algorithm. Simulation results
showed a 100% precision rate for the studied dataset.41
The grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA) is a
new meta-heuristic algorithm that was first proposed by
Mirjalili and Lewis.42 It is derived from the swarming
activities of the grasshoppers in the environment. The
GOA was applied for different datasets and showed good
results. This has been a motivation to implement this
algorithm in the system's architecture for breast cancer
diagnosis. The proposed system is illustrated in Figure 1.
As seen in the figure, the aim is to use the GOA in
both image segmentation and feature selection to achieve
3
Mammogram Median Image Segmentation
Acquisition Filtering Based on CNN
GOA
Healthy
Feature Feature
Classification
Selection Extraction
Cancer
F I G U R E 1 Proposed breast cancer diagnosis system [Color
figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
a favorable result which sets it apart from the other simi-
lar works.
Section 2 of this paper describes the materials and
methods where the CNN as the classifier and GOA for opti-
mization are described. Section 3 illustrates how to reduce
the noise of the input image based on median filtering.
Section 4 illustrates how to use the GOA for optimizing and
CNN for the classification. Section 5 describes the applica-
tion of GOA for the optimal selection of the image features.
Section 6 describes the SVMs. Section 7 describes the
adopted Database and Section 8 discusses the conclusion.
2 | MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1 | Convolutional neural network
In the CNN learning method, several layers are trained
efficiently.43,44
This method is efficient and is commonly used in differ-
ent computer vision applications. The CNN network consists
of three main layers: the convolutional layer, the pooling
layer, and the fully connected layer. Each layer performs dif-
ferent tasks. Figure 2 shows the architecture of the CNN.
For image classification, multiple 2D matrices are
considered as the input and the output of the con-
volutional layer. There is no limitation to use an equal
number of input and output matrices.
Local feature extraction is employed to obtain the
regional properties of the input image.
The main objective of the learning technique here is
to achieve a few kernel matrices to extract the principal
characteristics of the cancerous image from the mammo-
gram image.
This study employs the backpropagation (BP) technique
to optimize network connection weights. A sliding window
is used as a vector for convolution so that the dot product
and the weights are added.
The rectified linear unit is used as the activation func-
tion, where the function f(x) = max(x, 0).45
4 SHA ET AL.

Pooling F I G U R E 2 Convolutional
neural network architecture [Color
Malignant figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

...
Benign

Convolution

Max pooling is used to increase the scale reduction of since most of the mentioned layouts are experimental. In
the output; in this study, the highest value is the subse- recent years, a few methods have been presented to
quent layer of the sliding grid. improve CNN based on meta-heuristic algorithms.48,49
After the CNN initialization, an optimization algo-
rithm is used to fit the output by employing internal
weights. The BP algorithm is usually chosen for this 2.2 | Grasshopper optimization
process. algorithm
BP evaluates the error of the training pairs and then
it adjusts the weights of the neurons to fit according to The GOA is a new stochastic swarm-based optimization
the desired output.30,46 It uses a gradient descent algo- algorithm that is inspired by the behavior of grasshopper
rithm to minimize the error. insects.50
Gradient descent is a technique for cross-entropy loss Like any other swarm optimization algorithm, GOA
minimization.47 The related cost function, in this case, is starts with a random swarm of the population (candidate
as follows: solutions) to search and find the global optimum (maxi-
mum or minimum) solution for the problem.51
N X
X M
ðiÞ ðiÞ
The development of the ith grasshopper close to the
L= −dj logzj , ð1Þ objective grasshopper is determined by Pi which is formu-
j=1 i=1
lated as follows:
0 1
Pi = GF i + SAi + WAi , ð4Þ
where dj = @0, …, 0, 1, …, 1,0, …, 0A is the desired output
|fflffl{zfflffl}
k where GFi is the gravity force on the ith grasshopper, SAi
vector and zj is the softmax function of the mth class as is the social interaction, and WAi is the wind advection.
follows: Here, Pi is the position of the ith grasshopper which is
obtained as follows:
ðiÞ e fj
zj = PM , ð2Þ Pi = R1 SAi + R2 GF i + R3 WAi , ð5Þ
fi
i = 1e

where R1, R2, and R3 are random constants in the interval

where N describes the sample number. [0,1].
The function L can be modified based on the weight The social interaction for the ith grasshopper (SAi)
penalty to include γ value and to keep the values of the depends on the two social forces between two grasshop-
weights from getting larger: pers that is a repulsion force to stop collisions and an
attraction force over a small length. The social interaction
N X
X M
ðiÞ ðiÞ 1 X X 2 is simulated as follows:
L= − dj logzj + γ K W k,l , ð3Þ
j=1 i=1
2 L
X
N
SAk = SAðDkl ÞDkl ð6Þ
where Wk determines the connection weight, k is in layer l=1
l6¼i
la and L and K describe the total number of layers and
the layer l connections, respectively.
Since CNN is a strong classification tool, proposing Dlk = X k −X l ð7Þ
an optimal configuration for this structure is important
SHA ET AL. 5

Xk − Xl
D^lk =
Initializing: generate the initial swarm (population), cmax, cmin, and the
ð8Þ
Dlk maximum number of iteration.
Evaluate the cost function based on all agents in the swarm
where Dkl is the length of the Euclidian of the kth with T=the best solution (agent)
the lth position grasshopper, and D^lk describes the cur- for (l=1: max number of iteration)
rent unit vector between the kth and the lth grasshopper. Normalize the distance between grasshoppers in the interval [1, 4]
The strong point of the social forces is determined by SF Update the agent's position based on Eq. (14).
which is evaluated by the following formula: Apply the constraints
Update T if there is a better solution
SF ðRÞ = f i e − R=L −e − R , ð9Þ L=l+1
end for
Return T
where L is the length scale of attraction, and fi describes
the intense force of attraction. F I G U R E 3 Pseudo-code of the Grasshopper optimization
The intensity of the attraction strength is formulated algorithm (GOA)
as follows:
0 1 cmax −cmin
c = cmax −l , ð14Þ
BX C L
B N U dB −LdB  d  C
X dk = cB c SF X − X d  X l −X k C + T^d , ð10Þ
B 2 l k
Dlk C
@l=1 A
where LBd and UBd are the lower and the upper limita-
l6¼1 tions in the dth dimension, respectively, T^d is the
objective magnitude of dth dimension by the target
where SF describes the force due to grasshopper on social grasshopper, c describes the reducing factor to the suit-
interaction. able zone of the repulsion region and attraction region,
The GF component is evaluated by cmax and cmin are the highest value and the lowest value
of factor c, respectively, and l and L are the current
GF i = −GF e^g , ð11Þ iterations and the total number of iterations, respec-
tively. The pseudo-code of the algorithm is shown in
where e^g describes a unity vector direction to the center Figure 3.
of earth and Gi represents the constant for the gravity
force.
Finally, WAi is the wind advection model obtained by 3 | MEDIAN FILTERING

WAi = U e^g , ð12Þ In general, most of the measured signals have additive
unintentional and oscillation changes that are called
where U is a constant drift, and e^g describes a unity vec- noise. A mammogram is no exception and sometimes
tor along with the wind. presents with noise. The presence of noise causes prob-
By substituting the aforementioned parameters, the lems in image processing, especially when extracting the
following formula is achieved: image details for different applications. Differentiation
where N describes the number of grasshoppers, and SF is enhances high-frequency pixels that include noises.
a function. To avoid this problem, the images with noise are pre-
Assuming the gravity and wind are always toward the processed before the main processing.52,53
desired target, a formula is developed for evaluating the Median Filtering is a popular method in noise filter-
connections among swarm grasshoppers: ing. It is a low-pass filter that preserves the image details
while removing the noise. The median filter filters a
0 1
neighborhood m × n by arranging all neighborhoods in
BX C ascending order and choosing the middle element of the
B N U dB −LdB  d  C
d  X l −X k C
B 
SF X k −X l ^
x dl = cB c
2 D C + T d , ð13Þ ordered numbers, and finally replacing the central pixel.
@l=1 lk A
The mathematical equation of the median filter is as
l6¼1 follows:
6 SHA ET AL.
 
yðm,nÞ = median x ði,jÞ , ði, jÞ∈N ,
where N describes the neighborhood centered around the
location (m, n) in an image.
The median filter is effective in removing the salt and
pepper noises. In this study, the median filter is employed
to remove the digital noise in the mammogram image.
The size of the median filter mask selected is [m,n] = [3].
Figure 4 shows a simple example of median filtering on
the mammogram image. Figure 4 shows two different
examples. The first one shows how the median filter can
be used for image smoothing to enable easy image seg-
mentation and the second example applies a 30% salt and
pepper noise to the image and filters it with a median
filter.
4 | SEGMENTATION BY GOA-
B A S E D CN N
This study utilizes GOA to design an optimized CNN to
segment the cancerous areas from the background. The
function of the GOA is to justify the number of hyper-
parameters of CNN for better performance when com-
pared with manual justification. The solution for this
configuration is a sequence of integers.
FIGURE 4 Median filtering on the mammogram image for
smoothing and noise reduction: before (A) and after (B) image
processing [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
To prevent system error, the minimum (min) and the
ð15Þ
maximum (max) limitations adopted are 2 and the size of
the sliding window, respectively.
The minimum value 2 here is the allowed min value
for the max-pooling; thus, lower sizes are not allowed.
This optimization has an inequality constraint such that
the value of the sliding window should be less than the
input data. The number of swarms is set to 100, where
the characteristics of the CNN hyper-parameters are
determined by the agents, for example, within 10 integer
values. In this study, the half-value precision of CNN is
selected as the cost function of breast cancer validation.
Since both the CNN and GOA are used, the configu-
ration has a high computational cost as each swarm
agent of the CNN needs to be trained on the breast can-
cer dataset by BP for 1000 iterations Figure 5.
After initializing and evaluating the cost of the
agents, the position of the search agents is updated based
on the GOA parameters and the process repeats until the
stop criterion is achieved. In this study, the CNN weights
and biases selected for optimization are as follows:
 
W = w1 , w2 ,…, wp ð16Þ
A = fa1 , a2 , …,aA g ð17Þ
wn = fw1n , w2n ,…, wLn g ð18Þ
bn = fb1n , b2n , …, bLn g
l = 1, 2, …,L
n = 1, 2, …,A,
where l is the layer index, A and L are the total numbers
of agents and the total number of layers, respectively, n is
the number of the swarm, and win is the weight of layer i.
Therefore, the total parameters for optimizing are
Wn = {W, A}.
The formulation of the measured error between the
reference output and the system output is:
1X Ns X k  2
E= dji −oji , ð19Þ
Ns i = 1 j = 1
w1 w2 … wp a1 a2 … aA
F I G U R E 5 Search agent vector for the Grasshopper
optimization algorithm (GOA)-based convolutional neural
networks (CNN) [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
SHA ET AL. 7

F I G U R E 6 Architecture of Training set Testing set

Grasshopper optimization algorithm
(GOA)-based convolutional neural
networks (CNN) [Color figure can be
viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Setting the
network and its Calculate
training the fitness

Initialize random
grasshoppers

Update the agent’s

position based on
Termination
criteria Eq. (14)

Optimal hyper-parameters

F I G U R E 7 Some examples of
cancer area detection based on the
Grasshopper optimization algorithm
(GOA)-based convolutional neural
networks (CNN): (A) original image,
(B) image after process

where Ns is the number of training samples, k describes
the number of output layers, and dji and oji are the
desired output and the output value of CNN, respectively.
Because gradient descent as a part of the BP algo-
rithm can be easily trapped into the local minimum,
GOA is employed as a stochastic algorithm to escape the
local minima.54-56 Figure 6 shows the architecture of the
GOA-based CNN. Another advantage of using GOA over
the BP algorithm for error minimization is that the GOA-
based method does not require the backward phase,
which has a high computational cost. Figure 4 shows the
flowchart of the proposed method. A few examples of
cancerous area detection based on the GOA-based CNN
are shown in Figure 7.
5 | F EA T U R E EXTR ACTI O N AN D
S E L E C T I O N BA S E D O N S V M G O A
After detecting the cancerous area by image segmenta-
tion, the images should be further processed to obtain
precise results. This is performed by image feature extrac-
tion. Machine vision techniques are useful in image fea-
ture extraction, but these techniques cannot be used with
a few types of images like medical images. In recent
years, much attention has been paid to various areas of
image processing and computer vision in medical imag-
ing. Research on cancer detection has created a potent
text descriptor to extract images that obtain relevant
information for any changes in specific features. In this
research, feature extraction is employed in cancer detec-
tion after breast cancer image segmentation.
In general, the input image is crucial and massive
data of pixels. Such data make image processing compli-
cated. To simplify the operation, a technique is required
to extract profitable features and prune the extra data.
Therefore, in this study, image feature extraction is
employed to extract useful data from the mammogram
images. Different features are used for image feature
extraction. The utilized features are based on geometric
features, textures, and statistical features which are
introduced as follows:
M X
X N
Perimeter = bp ði,jÞ ð20Þ
i=1 j=1
Solidity = Area=Convex Area ð21Þ
M X
X N
Area = pði, jÞ ð22Þ
i=1 j=1
8 SHA ET AL.

pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2 Area value at (i, j), μ and σ are the mean and the SD,
Elongation = pffiffiffi ð23Þ respectively.
a π
As some features have more useful information than
Area others in feature extraction of the images, for optimal
Rectangularity = ð24Þ selection of features, a cost function is required.
a×b
In this research, by introducing a valid criterion, the
Irregularity index = 4π × Area=Perimeter 2 ð25Þ GOA minimizes the cost function to achieve the best fea-
tures. The cost function for this purpose is considered as
Area follows:
Form factor = ð26Þ
a2
Cost function
−1
 0:5 ðTP × TN Þ− ðFP × FN Þ
Eccentricity = 2a a2 − b2 ð27Þ = 1,
ððTN + FPÞ × ðTP + FPÞ × ðTP + FN Þ × ðTN + FN ÞÞÞ2
X
M X
N ð37Þ
Contrast = p2 ði,jÞ ð28Þ
i=1 j=1
where FN and FP are false negative and false positive,
M X
X N and TN and TP are truly negative and true positive,
Energy = p2 ði, jÞ ð29Þ respectively.
i=1 j=1

X
M X
N
pði, jÞ 6 | CLASSIFICATION BASED
Homogeneity = ð30Þ ON SVMS
i=1 j=1
1 + j i −j j

The SVM contains a set of points in the n-dimensional

X
M X
N
pði,jÞ −μr μc space of data that shows the boundaries of the classes
Correlation = ð31Þ
i=1 j=1
σr σc and categorizes them. It can be changed by relocating
one of these two cases. The SVM gives the best results for
classifying the data with a criterion for locating the sup-
1 X M X N
Mean = pði, jÞ ð32Þ port vectors.
MN i = 1 j = 1
The SVM detects the surface with best decision using
the formula:
M X
X N
Entropy = − pði, jÞlogpði,jÞ ð33Þ !
X
N
i=1 j=1 y = sgn yi αi K ðx,x i Þ + b , ð38Þ
i=1

1 X M X N
Variance = ðpði, jÞ −μÞ ð34Þ
MN i = 1 j = 1 where x determines a test set vector with d dimensions, xi
describes the ith training set vector, y is a class label
1 between −1 and 1, N is the training set numbers, K(x, xi)
SD = variance2 : ð35Þ
is a kernel function, α = {α1…αN} and b are the model
parameters.
Invariant moments: In this study, SVM is employed to classify the mam-
mogram image into cancerous and healthy groups. The
φ1 = η20 + η02 input data are first received as labeled vectors in a
hyper-dimensional space, based on the assumption that
φ2 = ðη20 −η02 Þ2 + 4η211 ð36Þ
the vectors have sets of features to specify a class. The
φ3 = ðη30 −3η12 Þ2 + ð3η21 −μ03 Þ2 , number of the input data is important to design a pre-
cise classifier; that is, using fewer data lessens, the sys-
tem precision and using many data fits the system
where bp is the external side length of the boundary pixel, excessively. The input data for SVM are obtained from
a and b represent the major and the minor axis, respec- the optimal selected features of the mammogram
tively, MN is the image size, p(i, j) is the pixels intensity images.
SHA ET AL.
7 | T H E DA T A B A S E
The MIAS57 and the DDSM58 are used to test and analyze
the proposed system. The MIAS database is gathered in
England to help the researchers who work with mammo-
gram images. Images are acquired from the UK National
Breast Screening Program. The database contains 322 dig-
ital mammogram images of size 1024 × 1024 that are
accurately labeled by specialists. MIAS is available at the
Pilot European Image Processing Archive at the Univer-
sity of Essex.
DDSM contains 2620 images of 3000 × 5000 pixels
with a 16-bit gray level. The gray-level images have an
intensity level between 0 and 255. The original format of
the images is LJPEG, which is converted to jpg format to
reduce complexity. Therefore, the databases had a total of
2942 (322 + 2620) images. Few samples of the MIAS
database and DDSM mammogram images are shown in
Figure 8.
8 | EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Experimental simulations were implemented on a laptop
with Matlab platform R2017b software on Intel Core
i7-4790K processor with 32 GB of RAM and two NVIDIA
GeForce GTX Titan X GPU cards with scalable link inter-
face. The simulations were applied to the MIAS and
F I G U R E 8 Sample mammography images from (A) MIAS
database and (B) DDSM
9
DDSM databases to analyze the system efficiency. The
proposed method includes four parts: The first part is the
noise elimination of the input mammogram images by
simple median filtering. Second, an optimized CNN
based on GOA is used to segment the cancerous area
from the background. Different features are extracted
from the image to process the raw data into useful infor-
mation with less complexity. Third, an optimized method
based on GOA is used to select profitable features.
Finally, necessary information is trained and injected
into an SVM classifier to classify the images into two
groups- cancerous and healthy.
For the proposed optimized CNN/GOA and GOA-
based feature extraction, the percentages for training
and testing the dataset are 70% and 30%, respectively.
The proposed network considers 10 000 iterations for
training. To ensure a constant analysis, the training
step is repeated 20 times and the final results are
described based on the mean values. Five performance
metrics were used for the analysis as follows:
accuracy =
correctly detected cases
ð39Þ
total cases
correctly detected healthy skin cases
Specifity = ð40Þ
total healthy skin cases
correctly detected skin cancer cases
PPV = ð41Þ
detected skin cancer cases
correctly detected healthy skin cases
NPV = ð42Þ
detected healthy skin cases
correctly detected skin cancer cases
Sensitivity = : ð43Þ
Total skin cancer cases
The proposed method is compared with 10 different
states of the art techniques to compare its efficiency. The
method of59 is a framework based on the semi-supervised
system. The method of60 is based on a commercial tool.
For a fair comparison, automatically extracted descriptors
of this method are employed. Few deep learning-based
systems like Ordinary CNN, AlexNet,61 VGG-16,62
ResNet,63 LIN,64 and Inception-v365 are also utilized for
this comparison. Table 1 illustrates a performance com-
parison between the proposed system and the aforemen-
tioned methods.
From the results, it is clear that the proposed method
has the highest precision compared with the 10 aforemen-
tioned methods. The results show the effect of using the
GOA optimization algorithm on the deep learning frame-
work. The distribution classification rate is also shown in
the following figure for more clarification in a bar chart.
10 SHA ET AL.

T A B L E 1 Comparison of the
Performance metric
performance metrics for breast cancer
Method Sensitivity Specificity PPV NPV Accuracy detection
Proposed optimized method 0.89 0.88 0.81 0.92 0.87
MED-NODE texture 0.57 0.82 0.74 0.81 0.75
descriptor59
MED-NODE color descriptor59 0.72 0.71 0.60 0.85 0.65
60
Spotmole 0.76 0.56 0.57 0.87 0.62
61
AlexNet 0.77 0.59 0.62 0.86 0.73
63
ResNet-50 0.79 0.76 0.68 0.85 0.72
ResNet-10163 0.69 0.74 0.73 0.87 0.81
62
VGG-16 0.85 0.83 0.74 0.89 0.82
64
LIN 0.86 0.86 0.78 0.88 0.83
65
Inception-v3 0.76 0.63 0.59 0.68 0.78
Ordinary CNN 0.74 0.95 0.71 0.79 0.74

T A B L E 2 Time computation complexity results of the final 9 | CONCLUSIONS

breast cancer detection methods
This paper presented a comprehensive methodology for
Algorithm Time (s)
the optimal diagnosis of breast cancer by mammography.
Proposed optimized method 952.15
The original images were pre-processed by a median filter
MED-NODE texture descriptor59 5.83 for noise elimination, and optimized image segmentation
59
MED-NODE color descriptor 6.47 based on a CNN was used to segment the cancerous area
Spotmole 60
3.16 from the background. Several features were extracted to
AlexNet 61
782.61 improve the precision and decrease the computational
ResNet-5063 689.25
cost. To extract relevant features, an optimal method was
63
employed to select the useful features and prune the
ResNet-101 743.16
unwanted features. After feature extraction, the features
62
VGG-16 12.15 are trained into an SVM classifier to differentiate the can-
64
LIN 20.16 cerous images from the healthy ones. Image segmenta-
Inception-v365 12.58 tion and feature selection were optimized by the
Ordinary CNN 782.53 relatively new GOA. Simulations were applied to the
MIAS and DDSM breast cancer database and were com-
pared with 10 different states of the art methods for ana-
lyzing the proposed system efficiency. The results showed
By analyzing the GOA and other methods for the stud- 96% Sensitivity, 93% Specificity, 85% PPV, 97% NPV, and
ied databases, it can be seen that the GOA has achieved 92% accuracy that is better than other methods.
the best classification accuracy of 87%. Lin and NGG-
16 by 83% and 82% have the second and third best RE FER EN CES
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How to cite this article: Sha Z, Hu L,
Rouyendegh BD. Deep learning and optimization
algorithms for automatic breast cancer detection.
Int J Imaging Syst Technol. 2020;1–12. https://doi.
org/10.1002/ima.22400