Revolutionizing Glioma Segmentation & Grading Using 3D MRI - Guided Hybrid Deep Learning Models

Gliomas are brain tumor types that have a high mortality rate which means early and accurate diagnosis is important for therapeutic intervention for the tumors. To address this difficulty, the proposed research will develop a hybrid deep learning model which integrates U-Net based segmentation and a hybrid DenseNet-VGG classification network with multihead attention and spatial-channel attention capabilities. The segmentation model will precisely demarcate the tumors in a 3D volume of MRI data guided by spatial and contextual information. The classification network which combines a branch of both DenseNet and VGG, will incorporate the demarcated tumor on which features with attention mechanisms would be focused on clinically relevant features. High-dimensional 3D MRI data could successfully be utilized in the model through preprocessing steps which are normalization, resampling, and data augmentation. Through a variety of measures the framework is evaluated: measures of performance in segmentation are Dice coefficient and Mean Intersection over Union (IoU) and measures of performance in classification are accuracy precision, recall, and F1-score. The hybrid framework that has been proposed has demonstrated through physical testing that it has the capability of obtaining a Dice coefficient of 98% in tumor segmentation, and 99% on classification accuracy, outperforming traditional CNN models and attention-free methods. Utilizing multi-head attention mechanisms enhances notions of priority in aspects of the tumor that are clinically significant, and enhances interpretability and accuracy. The results suggest a great potential of the framework in facilitating the timely and reliable diagnosis and grading of glioma by clinicians is promising, allowing for better planning of patient treatment.