Inverse Estimation of Breast Tumor Size and Location with Numerical Thermal Images of Breast Model Using Machine Learning Models

Abstract

Early screening of cancer plays a vital role in successful treatment. Normally, the temperature of breast surface changes due to the size and location of the underlying tumor. Temperature patterns can be used to estimate the size and location of tumor by an inverse approach using machine learning algorithms. The present study aims to provide an efficient machine learning model that can be relied on to predict the size and location of the tumor using numerical thermal images. There is no availability of actual thermal images labeled with the size and location of the tumor. Consequently, successive numerical simulations are used to develop the numerical thermal image dataset with a three-dimensional breast model solved with COMSOL Multiphysics. The obtained numerical thermal images are uniquely labeled with the corresponding size and location of the tumor and trained using various machine learning regression models such as linear, support vector, K-nearest neighbor, and decision tree regression models. The results are analyzed using parity plots and mean absolute error. The present study found that the decision tree regression model outperformed the other machine learning models and improved the estimation accuracy by rejecting the numerical thermal images which are having slight variation in surface temperature. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.