2019 International Conference on Computing, Communication, and Intelligent Systems (ICCCIS)
Early Stage Detection of Malignant Cells:
A Step Towards Better Life
Jasmine Awatramani
Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh
jasmineawatramani@gmail.com
Abstract- Cancer is a collection of diseases, which is
driven by change in cells of the body by increasing
the normal growth and control. Its prevalence is
increasing year by year, and is accordingly
advancing along with it to counter the occurrences
and provide solution. Breast Cancer is considered
to be a deadly disease and is one of the crucial
reasons of demise among the women globally.
Early detection of breast cancer increases the
probability of better treatment and viability.
Research has been done mostly on mammogram
images. Although, sometimes these images are
inaccurate and may show fallacious detection.
Thus, it can risk the patient’s well-being. It is,
therefore, important to obtain substitutes that are
trouble-free, economical, secure, and can generate
a more genuine prediction. Presently, Machine
Learning approaches are being widely used in
breast cancer detection. Machine Learning enables
the system to master based on former occurrences
and decide using a variety of statistical and
probabilistic techniques with a minimum human
intrusion. This research work showcase the use of
five machine learning methods, which are SVM
(Support Vector Machine), KNN (K-Nearest
Neighbor), K-SVM (Kernel Support Vector
Machine), Random Forest Tree, Decision Tree and
the accuracy achieved for breast cancer detection
has been 97.20%, 95.10%, 96.50%, 98.60%,
95.80% respectively. As per the results, Random
Forest Tree offers the highest accuracy in
comparison with other algorithms when applied to
the Wisconsin breast cancer detection dataset
which has been taken from a machine learning
repository.
Keywords- Breast Cancer, Machine Learning, Random
Forest Tree, Breast Cancer Detection, Accuracy.
ISBN:

978-1-7281-4826-7/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: AMITY University. Downloaded on June 29,2021 at 11:38:38 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Nitasha Hasteer
Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh
nitasha78@gmail.com
I.
INTRODUCTION
Cancer is described as malignant tumor which is made up of
collection of cells that grows uncontrollably. Cancer is a life
threatening disease as it holds the second rank in causing
deaths globally[10]. It is responsible for around 9.6 million
deaths in 2018. The most commonly occurring cancers are
Colorectal Cancer, Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer, Skin
Cancer, Stomach, Prostate Cancer[2]. It tends to leave long-
term and devastating effects on the patient as well as the
family of the patient.
Breast Cancer arises in the cells of the breast tissue
(carcinoma) or the conjoining tissue of the breast (sarcoma).
When the cells in the breast start expanding abnormally, it is
then commonly known as a tumor. There are two types of
tumors, benign (non-cancerous) and malignant
(cancerous)[1]. According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), Breast Cancer is the most chronic among women
worldwide[2]. In 2018, an organization Breast Cancer -
India Against Cancer, outlined that Breast Cancer reports for
14% of all cancers in females of India[3]. The incidence rate
of India is the lowest but its mortality rate is the highest. This
indicates that the gap between mortality and incidence rate
is extensive. Therefore, advancements in the current
methods are needed to detect breast cancer at an early
stage[6]. With the help of early stage detection, the gap
between mortality and incidence can be decreased, as well
as, it increases the chances of successful treatment and
survival.
The signs of Breast Cancer may comprise of formation of a
lump, pain in breast, blood discharge from the nipple when
size and shape of the nipple of breast changes, and others.
[4,7]. Although, several females don’t experience any of
these signs, therefore, the only way out left in this situation
is screening. At present, the mammogram is being used to
detect a malignant tumor in the breast[18]. A mammogram
is a largely used method for the diagnosis of breast cancer,
which produces 2-dimensional breast images. However,
many times it is not able to diagnose even the benign tumor
accurately as the size of both benign and malignant tumor at
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2019 International Conference on Computing, Communication, and Intelligent Systems (ICCCIS)
an early stage is small. Sometimes even mammograms have
false-positive results. Due to these false-positive results, it
often leads to unwanted surgeries, biopsies and harmful
radiations[8,9]. Therefore, early detection through
advancements of Computer Science is an important area of
research[10]. In order to overcome the challenges faced by
patients in terms of harmful radiations, various methods
have been developed such as Breast MRI Scans, Fine Needle
Aspiration (FNA), where a little amount of tissue is extracted
from the area of suspicion, and checked for the carcinogenic
cells[18]. These methods deliver limited results in terms of
precision and validity. The techniques discussed above
requires frequent human intervention and have limited
capabilities[9]. Thus, it is vital to apply the advances of
machine learning for early detection. It is one of the best
ways to save life and take appropriate action towards the
disease.
Artificial Intelligence has been a proven area to bring forth
successful results. It assists us in the processing of data to
acquire secure and faster results[11]. Machine Learning is a
collection of tools in Artificial Intelligence, used for
producing and analyzing the algorithms that simplify the
recognition of pattern, prediction, and classification.
Machine Learning involves a four-step procedure:
Collection of data, selection of the model, model training
and model testing. Hence, Machine Learning can result in
even better accurate decision making and prediction[8]. It
has and is contributing a lot in the field of Healthcare such
as Personalized Medicine, Smart Health Records, Disease
Diagnosis and many more[20]. In research of cancer, these
machine learning methods could be used to recognize
various patterns in a data set and accordingly predicting the
type of tumor existing in the breast of the patient, that is,
benign or malignant.
 

 







    

Fig.1: Four-step procedure of machine learning
Machine learning algorithms have become a conventional
mechanism for medical researchers. Breast cancer produces
no symptoms when lump of the cancer is little. Therefore,
some advance techniques are needed to treat cancer at an
early stage. We have used five machine learning classifiers
in our study: Support Vector Machine(SVM), K-Nearest
Neighbor(KNN), Kernel-Support Vector Machine(K-
SVM), Random Forest Tree and Decision Tree. The aim is
to determine the best accuracy determining algorithm among
these five algorithms. These algorithms have been
implemented in Jupyter Notebook which is an open-source
web application[19] along with various libraries like
Numpy, Pandas, Cufflinks, and others. This paper presents
the results of our experimentation. The rest of the paper is

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structured as follows: Section II gives an overview of
machine learning algorithms used in the study. Section III
presents the related work in the subject area of the study.
Section IV explains the methodology used in the work.
Section V presents experimental results and discussions.
Finally, we conclude and present future direction of work in
Section VI.
II.
Machine Learning Algorithms
Machine Learning is commonly used in recognition of
patterns and making predictions. There are mainly three
types of categories in which machine learning is divided.
Those are Supervised Learning, Unsupervised Learning and
Reinforcement Learning. Supervised Learning is applied if
there is an actual structure of inputs progressed and outputs
are already gathered. Here, the labeling of names is done
properly. Unsupervised Learning is applied when the pattern
is not known to the system and no proper structure is there.
The labeling of names is not done properly. Reinforcement
Learning is applied when the system communicates with a
dynamic environment[13]. Some of the algorithms used in
the study are discussed below:
•
SVM
Support Vector Machine is an algorithm under
supervised machine learning. It can be determined
by segregating hyperplane and classify from the
assembled data. Therefore, inflated least distance
is discovered. Two or more data types can be
determined with the help of SVM. The kind of
SVM used here is linear SVM. SVM comprises
single or combinational models SSVM(Smooth
Support Vector Machine), Standard SVM, and
others.[8,9]
•
KNN
KNN is commonly used for detecting cancer. It is
suggested to choose a bigger dataset for training
along with an odd-numbered K value. It does not
make any suppositions on the fundamental
distribution of data. Its performance is immense in
recognition of pattern and predictive analysis.
KNN collect points of data that are close to the
new point of data. Varying attributes on a broader
scale may impact effectively on the distance
between points of data. Sorting is done on those
closest points of data from the arrival point of data
in terms of data. Usually, Euclidian distance is
recommended to measure the distance[8,9].
•
K-SVM
It is very much similar to SVM but is a clustering
algorithm (unsupervised learning). The major


2019 International Conference on Computing, Communication, and Intelligent Systems (ICCCIS)

difference between the two is that SVM is linear
segregating hyperplane whereas, Kernel functions
are polynomial. The use of kernel will provide
better performance as many datasets consist of
non-linear decision boundary[5].
•
Random Forest Tree
Random Forest Tree method is used at the point of
standardization, where the quality of the model is
the highest. Issues are compromised regarding
bias and variance. Random Forest Tree makes
innumerable numbers of Decision Trees, where
random samples are used with a substitution to
master the issues of Decision Trees. Observations
are determined by each tree, and the decision with
the maximum votes is selected. It is mostly used
in the unsupervised mode of area for evaluating
the closeness among the points of data[8].
•
Decision Tree
Decision Tree is a method of data mining
commonly used to diagnose breast cancer at an
early stage. It is a prototype that displays
classifications or regressions as a tree. Decision
Tree breaks the dataset into tiny sub-data, and then
to even tinier-ones. As an outcome, a tree is
evolved and at the level of termination, the result
is disclosed. In the structure of a tree, leaves
symbolize class labels and branches symbolize
combinations of attributes leading to class labels.
Therefore, the Decision Tree is not noise-
sensitive[8].
compared. M.Amrane et al.,[11] compared two techniques:
Naïve Bayes and KNN. This paper concludes that KNN
gives the highest accuracy in comparison with Naïve Bayes
with the help of cross validation technique. In the research
work by B.M. Gayathri et al.,[16], a comparison of
Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) with other algorithms
has been shown and proven that RVM shows low
computational cost thus, is better than other techniques.
Study by S. Kharya et al.,[14] reveals that artificial
intelligence and neural networks are most commonly used
methods to predict breast cancer. The study brings forth the
pros and cons of the algorithms such as Decision Trees ,
Naïve Bayes and neural networks. Study by S. Chaurasia et
al.,[17] explains that out of Bayes learner, decision tree and
neural net, neural net proved to have greater accuracy and
precision. In the study by Y. Khourdifi et al.,[15], various
machine algorithms have been compared out of which SVM
obtained greatest accuracy out of Random Forest, SVM,
KNN and Naïve Bayes. From the review, we infer that breast
cancer detection has attracted the interest of researchers and
practitioners.

III.
LITERATURE REVIEW

The research has been done by accessing IEEE Digital

Library to identify the relevant studies in this area. The
literature review has been done. Our work shows the
systematic literature review of studies to investigate the
literature with an objective to identify the studies which had
breast cancer detection as their prime focus and have used
Wisconsin Dataset for their research.

A.sharma et al.,[13] conducted a research with an objective

to diagnose breast cancer as benign (B) or malignant (M)
using three machine learning methods: logistic regression,
KNN and SVM, where the author concluded that Logistic
Regression gives the highest accuracy out of the three .
Research by D. Bazazeh et al.,[12] compares machine
learning techniques to detect breast cancer. In this paper, an
overview of most common algorithms such as SVM random
forest and Bayesian networks has been presented and

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 2019 International Conference on Computing, Communication, and Intelligent Systems (ICCCIS)
Authors
A. Sharma, S. Kulshreshtha,
S.Daniel[13]
D. Bazazeh, R. Shubair[12]
M. Amrane, S.Oukid, I.Gagaoua, T.
Ensari[11]
B.M. Gayathri, Dr.C.P.Sumathi[16]
S. Kharya, Sunita soni[14]
S. Chaurasia, N. Chourasia, P.
Chakrabarthi[17]
Y. Khourdifi, M.Bahaj[15]
Focus Area of Study Results
Objective of the research was to obtain link between
precision, recall and number of features in the dataset, The results of the study showed the application of
along with the probability of determining cancer in the Logistic Regression with accuracy 96.89%.
affected patients.
Objective of this work was to compare 3 machine learning
algorithms where the major criterion was area of ROC This research showed the application of SVM with
(receiver operating characteristic), precision, recall, and accuracy 96.60%.
accuracy.
Aim of the research was to compare 2 machine learning
The authors concluded that KNN showed best
techniques and calculate their accuracy with the help of
accuracy which was 97.51%.
cross validation.
Study aimed at comparison of RVM with other machine This research showed the application of RVM with
learning techniques for detection of breast cancer. accuracy 97.00%.
Objective of this paper was to examine the performance on
the basis of machine learning tool along with use of The results of the study showed the application of
weighted concept which improves the performance of the Naïve Bayes with accuracy 92.00%.
algorithm.
Aim of this paper was to implement and compare 3
machine learning techniques and to conclude the best The results of the paper showed the application of
algorithm with the greater accuracy and precision to Neural Networks with accuracy 96.14%.
diagnose breast cancer at an early stage.
Objective of the research was to deduce the mortality rate
This research showed the application of SVM with
due to breast cancer, by detecting and preventing it at an
accuracy 97.90%.
early stage with the help of machine learning techniques.
Table.1: Literature Studies

IV.
METHODOLOGY

A. Attributes and Data Set

We have used a dataset which is available publicly and is

known as the Wisconsin Breast Cancer dataset (Diagnostic)
for our study[14,20]. It is contributed by the University of
California, Irvine (UCI). This dataset consisted of 10
attributes for each nucleus, specified as follows: Fig.2: Benign and Malignant Cases

Radius, Texture, Perimeter, Area, Smoothness, A.
Preprocessing of Data

Compactness, Concavity, Concave points, Symmetry,
Fractional Dimension
In addition to above, the id and diagnosis were available in
the dataset out of which Diagnosis was considered for the
study. The corresponding representation was Benign (B:0)
and Malignant (M:1). The dataset was already labelled.
The mean, standard error and largest (worst) of the features
were computed for each and every image which resulted in
30 features.
The entire data set consists of 569 clinical cases. Out of these
cases the representation of Benign and Malignant cases is
illustrated in Fig.2.
It is the initial step before data modeling. As we have
discovered that the data obtained for modeling is incomplete,
that is, some values are missing. There might be a possibility
of inconsistency. Therefore, to remove the errors, smooth
noisy data and reduction of data, preprocessing is done. This
is done by feature scaling as the entries in our data are mostly
numeric.
B.
Visualization of Data
Data visualization is a process of selection of data for
patterns and displaying it in the format of graphs or pictures.
It helps to select the correct model for data modeling. Data
cardinality and size of the data play an important role in data
visualization. Greater the cardinality, larger is the percentage
of unique values and vice versa.

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 2019 International Conference on Computing, Communication, and Intelligent Systems (ICCCIS)

The detecting data set consists of data for training(data

modeling) as 75% and data for testing(prediction and
analysis) as 25% in performed in training split and testing
split for data modeling.[13]

A user friendly interface was designed to enable end-users

and practitioners to analyze various algorithms using
different datasets. The snapshot of the designed interface is
given below in Fig.4.

Fig.4: Designed Interface

Fig.3: Data Visualization V.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND

DISCUSSION
Visualization of data can be done in multiple ways such as
heat maps, pie-charts, box plots, etc. The visualization done
Collection of assessments were done using Jupyter
for this research was displayed with the help of libraries of
Notebook. The configuration of the computer was Intel Core
python: matplotlib, cufflinks and plotly, Fig.3. Cufflinks and
i5 with 128mb eDRAM. During the research, 5 algorithms
Plotly, create a visualization that can communicate with the
were implemented, compared and analyzed on the Breast
user.
Cancer dataset. The comparative study was done in terms of
accuracy.
Some other important libraries used in the entire model
were: NumPy, Pandas and Scikit-Learn.
The best accuracy was of Random Forest Tree as depicted in
Table.2. It is inferred that Random Forest can differentiate
C.
Selection and Implementation of
between malignant and benign tumors with a higher
Model
accuracy and outperformed other algorithms, shown in
Fig.5.
The selection for the most suitable model varies. It
commonly depends on the kind of data used. After the
selection and withdrawal of features, machine learning
algorithms can be applied to the obtained data. As we have
discussed previously, the machine learning algorithms to be
applied are KNN, SVM, K- SVM, Decision Tree, and
Random Forest Tree.

We developed a model on the dataset of benign and

malignant file. We can detect this issue of classification, as
from the viewpoint of automated learning, detection of
breast cancer can be taken as a clustering issue or
classification.

The size of the testing and training set plays a major role.
The dataset is divided into two parts: testing and training set. Fig.5: Random Forest Classifier Accuracy

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2019 International Conference on Computing, Communication, and Intelligent Systems (ICCCIS)
S.No. Algorithm Used Accuracy


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Table.2: Comparison of Accuracy
VI.
CONCLUSION
In this study, we have implemented different Machine
Learning algorithms to detect Breast Cancer, along with its
accuracy. The major objective of the research is to improve
the accuracy to detect breast cancer. As, at an early stage
sometimes even the mammography fails to recognize the
presence of small lumps. In this paper, Random Forest Tree
has been the most efficacious algorithm (98.60% accuracy
in the training phase) to detect breast cancer out of the five
algorithms used.
In future, we plan to do in-depth research of these datasets
by including Deep Learning models to obtain even better
performance and greater flexibility. Furthermore, we plan to
test these machine learning algorithms on even larger
datasets for better accuracy and be to adopt these Machine
Learning methods for constrained applications in E-health.
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