OralNet: Fused Optimal Deep Features Framework for Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma Detection

Humankind is witnessing a gradual increase in cancer incidence, emphasizing the importance of early diagnosis and treatment, and follow-up clinical protocols. Oral or mouth cancer, categorized under head and neck cancers, requires effective screening for timely detection. This study proposes a framework, OralNet, for oral cancer detection using histopathology images. The research encompasses four stages: (i) Image collection and preprocessing, gathering and preparing histopathology images for analysis; (ii) feature extraction using deep and handcrafted scheme, extracting relevant features from images using deep learning techniques and traditional methods; (iii) feature reduction artificial hummingbird algorithm (AHA) and concatenation: Reducing feature dimensionality using AHA and concatenating them serially and (iv) binary classification and performance validation with three-fold cross-validation: Classifying images as healthy or oral squamous cell carcinoma and evaluating the framework's performance using three-fold cross-validation. The current study examined whole slide biopsy images at 100x and 400x magnifications. To establish OralNet's validity, 3000 cropped and resized images were reviewed, comprising 1500 healthy and 1500 oral squamous cell carcinoma images. Experimental results using OralNet achieved an oral cancer detection accuracy exceeding 99.5%. These findings confirm the clinical significance of the proposed technique in detecting oral cancer presence in histology slides.

Automated summary

With the increasing incidence of cancer, the importance of early diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up clinical protocols is emphasized. Oral cancer, as a type of head and neck cancer, requires effective screening for timely detection. This study proposes a framework called OralNet for oral cancer detection using histopathology images. Experimental results show that OralNet achieved an accuracy exceeding 99.5% in detecting oral cancer presence in histology slides, confirming the clinical significance of the proposed technique.