EfficientNet-driven compound scaling for performance enhancement of CNNs in multimodal cancer imaging
Keywords:
Convolutional neural networks, Deep learning, Magnetic resonance imaging, Computed tomography, Brain tumor detection, Lung cancer detectionAbstract
Recent developments in deep learning-based medical image analysis have paved the way forward in improving the accuracy of cancer detection. In this study, we focused on enhancing the performance of different variants of existing Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures by leveraging the compound scaling feature of EfficientNet. The EfficientNet architecture is known to scale the network width, resolution, and depth using a specific scaling factor. We integrated the compound scaling factor of EfficientNet-B2 to scale the network width and resolution of conventional models while preserving the default depth of all architectures. The proposed approach is evaluated on two distinct medical imaging tasks: lung cancer detection using Computed Tomography (CT) scans and brain tumor classification using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Multiple CNN architectures, including different variants of VGG, ResNet, and DenseNet, are assessed in both baseline and scaled configurations. On the CT dataset, the proposed method achieves an accuracy improvement of up to 8.30%, while on the MRI dataset, improvements reach 12.95%. These improvements suggest that compound scaling is a suitable strategy to enhance the utilization of the existing conventional CNN architecture instead of replacing it.
References
Abraham, L. A., Palanisamy, G., & Veerapu, G. (2025). Transparent brain tumor detection using DenseNet169 and LIME. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 28185. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-13233-7
Alnaggar, O. A. M. F., Jagadale, B. N., Saif, M. A. N., Ghaleb, O. A., Ahmed, A. A., Aqlan, H. A. A., & Al-Ariki, H. D. E. (2024). Efficient artificial intelligence approaches for medical image processing in healthcare: Comprehensive review, taxonomy, and analysis. Artificial Intelligence Review, 57(8), 221. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-024-10814-2
Alzubaidi, L., Zhang, J., Humaidi, A. J., Al-Dujaili, A., Duan, Y., Al-Shamma, O., ... Farhan, L. (2021). Review of deep learning: Concepts, CNN architectures, challenges, applications, future directions. Journal of Big Data, 8(1), 53. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-021-00444-8
Armato, S. G., III, McLennan, G., Bidaut, L., McNitt-Gray, M. F., Meyer, C. R., Reeves, A. P., ... Clarke, L. P. (2011). The Lung Image Database Consortium (LIDC) and Image Database Resource Initiative (IDRI): A completed reference database of lung nodules on CT scans. Medical Physics, 38(2), 915–931. https://doi.org/10.1118/1.3528204
Bairagi, V. K., Gumaste, P. P., Rajput, S. H., & Chethan, K. S. (2023). Automatic brain tumor detection using CNN transfer learning approach. Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing, 61(7), 1821–1836. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-023-02820-3
Bhuvaji, S., Kadam, A., Bhumkar, P., Dedge, S., & Kanchan, S. (2020). Brain tumor classification (MRI) [Dataset]. Kaggle. https://doi.org/10.34740/KAGGLE/DSV/1183165
Chen, X., Wang, X., Zhang, K., Fung, K. M., Thai, T. C., Moore, K., ... Qiu, Y. (2022). Recent advances and clinical applications of deep learning in medical image analysis. Medical Image Analysis, 79, 102444. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.media.2022.102444
Cheng, J. (2017). Brain tumor dataset [Dataset]. figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1512427.v8
El-Feshawy, S. A., Saad, W., Shokair, M., & Dessouky, M. (2023). IoT framework for brain tumor detection based on optimized modified ResNet 18 (OMRES). The Journal of Supercomputing, 79(1), 1081–1110. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-022-04678-y
Falk Delgado, A. (2025). Advances of MR imaging in glioma: What the neurosurgeon needs to know. Acta Neurochirurgica, 167(1), 174. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00701-025-06593-6
Guo, M., Cao, Z., Huang, Z., Hu, S., Xiao, Y., Ding, Q., ... Zhang, G. (2024). The value of CT shape quantification in predicting pathological classification of lung adenocarcinoma. BMC Cancer, 24(1), 35. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-023-11802-5
He, K., Zhang, X., Ren, S., & Sun, J. (2016). Deep residual learning for image recognition. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) (pp. 770–778). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2016.90
Huang, G., Liu, Z., Van Der Maaten, L., & Weinberger, K. Q. (2017). Densely connected convolutional networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (pp. 4700–4708). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPR.2017.243
Iqbal, S., Qureshi, A. N., Li, J., & Mahmood, T. (2023). On the analyses of medical images using traditional machine learning techniques and convolutional neural networks. Archives of Computational Methods in Engineering, 30(5), 3173–3233. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11831-023-09899-9
Kaur, C., & Garg, U. (2023). Artificial intelligence techniques for cancer detection in medical image processing: A review. Materials Today: Proceedings, 81(Part 2), 806–809. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.04.241
Li, Y., Daho, M. E. H., Conze, P. H., Zeghlache, R., Le Boité, H., Tadayoni, R., ... Quellec, G. (2024). A review of deep learning-based information fusion techniques for multimodal medical image classification. Computers in Biology and Medicine, 177, 108635. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2024.108635
Martucci, M., Russo, R., Schimperna, F., D’Apolito, G., Panfili, M., Grimaldi, A., ... Gaudino, S. (2023). Magnetic resonance imaging of primary adult brain tumors: State of the art and future perspectives. Biomedicines, 11(2), 364. https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines11020364
Mohandass, G. H. K. D. S. C. S. G., Krishnan, G. H., Selvaraj, D., & Sridhathan, C. (2024). Lung cancer classification using optimized attention-based convolutional neural network with DenseNet-201 transfer learning model on CT image. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, 95, 106330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bspc.2024.106330
Narvekar, S., Shirodkar, M., Raut, T., Vaingankar, P., Kumar, K. C., & Aswale, S. (2022). A survey on detection of lung cancer using different image processing techniques. In 2022 3rd International Conference on Intelligent Engineering and Management (ICIEM) (pp. 13–18). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIEM54221.2022.9853190
Nickparvar, M. (2021). Brain tumor MRI dataset [Dataset]. Kaggle. https://doi.org/10.34740/KAGGLE/DSV/2645886
Pandian, R., Vedanarayanan, V., Kumar, D. R., & Rajakumar, R. (2022). Detection and classification of lung cancer using CNN and GoogLeNet. Measurement: Sensors, 24, 100588. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measen.2022.100588
Panayides, A. S., Amini, A., Filipovic, N. D., Sharma, A., Tsaftaris, S. A., Young, A., ... Pattichis, C. S. (2020). AI in medical imaging informatics: Current challenges and future directions. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, 24(7), 1837–1857. https://doi.org/10.1109/JBHI.2020.2991043
Patel, P. R., & De Jesus, O. (2023). CT scan. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
Rana, M., & Bhushan, M. (2023). Machine learning and deep learning approach for medical image analysis: Diagnosis to detection. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 82(17), 26731–26769. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-022-14305-w
Raza, R., Zulfiqar, F., Khan, M. O., Arif, M., Alvi, A., Iftikhar, M. A., & Alam, T. (2023). Lung-EffNet: Lung cancer classification using EfficientNet from CT-scan images. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 126, 106902. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engappai.2023.106902
Shamshad, F., Khan, S., Zamir, S. W., Khan, M. H., Hayat, M., Khan, F. S., & Fu, H. (2023). Transformers in medical imaging: A survey. Medical Image Analysis, 88, 102802. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.media.2023.102802
Simonyan, K., & Zisserman, A. (2015). Very deep convolutional networks for large-scale image recognition. International Conference on Learning Representations. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1409.1556
Tan, M., & Le, Q. V. (2019). EfficientNet: Rethinking model scaling for convolutional neural networks. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning (Vol. 97, pp. 6105–6114). PMLR. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1905.11946
Teixeira, P. A. G., Kessler, H., Morbée, L., Douis, N., Boubaker, F., Gillet, R., & Blum, A. (2025). Mineralized tissue visualization with MRI: Practical insights and recommendations for optimized clinical applications. Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging, 106(5), 147–156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diii.2024.11.001
Tian, L., Wu, J., Song, W., Hong, Q., Liu, D., Ye, F., ... Chen, L. (2024). Precise and automated lung cancer cell classification using deep neural network with multiscale features and model distillation. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 10471. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-61101-7
Ulli, S. S., Akkineni, H., Vuyyuru, U. S., Pathyala, S. R., Nannapaneni, U. K., & Suvarna, B. (2024). Brain tumor detection using modified VGG-19 model. In 2024 International Conference on Electrical Electronics and Computing Technologies (ICEECT) (Vol. 1, pp. 1–5). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICEECT61758.2024.10739175
Venkatachalam, C., Shah, P., Renukadevi, P., John, S., & Venkatachalam, S. (2025). Brain tumor diagnosis using modified DenseNet121 architecture with adaptive learning rate and callback mechanism. Neural Computing and Applications, 37(17), 11527–11553. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-025-11150-4
Xu, W., Fu, Y. L., & Zhu, D. (2023). ResNet and its application to medical image processing: Research progress and challenges. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 240, 107660. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2023.107660
Yan, Y., Liu, G., Cai, H., Wu, E. Q., Cai, J., Cheok, A. D., ... Fan, Z. (2024). A review of graph theory-based diagnosis of neurological disorders based on EEG and MRI. Neurocomputing, 599, 128098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2024.128098
Yang, H., Zhang, Y., Gong, Y., Zhang, J., He, L., Zhong, J., & Tang, L. (2024). A lung biopsy path planning algorithm based on the double spherical constraint Pareto and indicators’ importance-correlation degree. Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, 117, 102426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compmedimag.2024.102426
Downloads
Published
Data Availability Statement
The data supporting this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Muhammad Hassan Farid, Muhammad Adnan Nasim, Muhammad Abdullah Umar, Usman Javed

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Please click here for details about AJSET's Licensing and Copyright policies.