[Link].

com/scientificreports

OPEN HyFusion-X: hybrid deep and

traditional feature fusion
with ensemble classifiers for
breast cancer detection using
mammogram and ultrasound
images
Anum Shaukat1, Saima Farhan1, Rabia Javed1, Salma Idris2, Faten S. Alamri3, Anees Ara4 &
Tanzila Saba2
Breast cancer detection and diagnosis remain challenging due to the complexity of tumor tissues and
image quality variations, which hinder early and accurate identification. Timely diagnosis is vital for
initiating treatment and improving patient outcomes. This study presents a novel hybrid feature fusion
method, combining deep features from pre-trained models (ResNet50, InceptionV3, and MobileNetV2)
with traditional texture features from Gabor filters and wavelet transforms, applied separately to
mammogram and ultrasound datasets for breast cancer detection. A robust pre-processing pipeline,
including image resizing, scaling, normalization, and CLAHE for contrast enhancement, is used
to improve model performance. Data augmentation strengthens model robustness, and tumor
segmentation is performed using Otsu’s multi-thresholding to accurately localize high-intensity
regions. The hybrid feature extraction method yields 600 features, which are optimized through
statistical feature selection for enhanced classification accuracy. Machine learning algorithms–
XGBoost, AdaBoost, and CatBoost–are utilized to classify breast lesions across datasets, including
Mini-DDSM and INbreast for mammogram images, and Rodrigues and BUSI for ultrasound images.
Unlike most prior work, this fusion is applied across both mammogram and ultrasound modalities
within one framework, a combination that has not been widely explored. Our approach explicitly
targets the multi-modal gap to enhance robustness and generalizability across imaging types. The
performance of the ensemble classifiers is compared, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed
approach. The models achieved high classification accuracies: 98.67% for Rodrigues, 97.06% for
INbreast, 97.02% for BUSI, and 95.00% for Mini-DDSM. These results highlight the effectiveness of the
method and its potential to improve breast cancer detection. Future research will focus on comparisons
with state-of-the-art models and real-world clinical applications.

Keywords Breast cancer, Deep learning, Ensemble classifiers, Multi-modal imaging

Breast cancer is a significant global health concern, affecting millions of women annually. According to the
World Health Organization (WHO), it is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women, whereas lung cancer
remains the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. In the United States, approximately one in eight women will
be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer during their lifetime. The American Cancer Society projects 2,041,910
new cancer cases in 2025, averaging 5600 cases per day including 1,053,250 in men and 988,660 in women, with

1Department of Computer Science, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore 54000, Pakistan. 2Center of
Excellence in Cyber Security (CYBEX), Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 3Department of Mathematical
Sciences, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, [Link] 84428, 116711 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 4AIDA
Lab. College of Computer and Information Sciences (CCIS), Prince Sultan University, 11586 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
email: fsalamri@[Link]

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618,120 anticipated deaths1. Alarmingly, Black women are expected to experience a 41% higher incidence rate
than White women2.
In Asia, Pakistan reports the highest incidence of breast cancer, with one in nine women at risk. In 2020 alone,
25,928 new cases and 13,725 deaths were recorded3. High mortality rates in Pakistan are primarily attributed
to limited awareness and delayed diagnosis. Data from the Pakistan National Cancer Registry (NCR) shows a
steady annual rise in cases, approaching 90,000 each year.
Breast cancer arises from uncontrolled cell growth due to genetic mutations that disrupt regulatory
mechanisms4. The nucleus, which governs cell division, is often implicated, and mutations can lead to tumor
formation5. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) predicts 35 million new cancer cases
globally by 20506. Breast tumors are classified as benign or malignant: benign tumors grow slowly and remain
localized, whereas malignant tumors are aggressive and metastasize if untreated7. Genetic abnormalities account
for most cases8, with 5–10% linked to inherited mutations and 20–25% resulting from cellular changes acquired
during development9.
Symptoms may include swelling, redness, palpable lumps, or nipple changes10. However, nearly 50% of cases
present without noticeable symptoms or identifiable risk factors. Risk increases significantly with age, particularly
after 40, necessitating regular mammographic or ultrasound screening every six months. Breastfeeding has been
shown to reduce risk2. Breast cancer subtypes include invasive, non-invasive, and cancerous phyllodes tumors,
with the latter being the most severe and incurable11.
Early detection is critical, as survival rates exceed 90% when cancer is identified and treated promptly12.
Mammography, an X-ray imaging technique, is effective for detecting microcalcifications and other signs of
breast cancer but is less effective in women with dense breast tissue13. Ultrasonography is useful for distinguishing
between benign and malignant lesions, especially in dense tissue, but has limitations in terms of sensitivity14.
Both methods have proven successful but are subject to limitations such as image quality, the need for radiologist
expertise, and the risk of missing small lesions, especially in early stages15.
Manual diagnosis is time-consuming and prone to error, often leading to missed early-stage tumors. To
overcome these challenges, Computer-aided Detection (CAD) systems16 have been developed to automate
detection, improve diagnostic accuracy, and reduce oversight. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI),
particularly Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), and Transfer Learning (TL), have transformed
medical imaging by simplifying analysis for radiologists and oncologists17. While ML relies on large labeled
datasets and handcrafted feature, DL automates feature extraction but demands extensive computational
resources. TL leverages pre-trained models to reduce training time and enhance accuracy, making it particularly
useful in medical imaging applications18.
Several studies have explored these approaches. Hekmat et al.19 used a differential evolution-driven
optimization technique to enhance ensemble learning models. The study demonstrated how combining
optimization with deep learning models, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), can improve the
detection accuracy of complex medical conditions. Similarly, Khan et al.20 also used multiple CNN models in
an ensemble, fine-tuned via grid search optimization. The combination of multiple models in an ensemble,
along with fine-tuning through grid search, has been shown to improve classification performance significantly.
TL models, pre-trained on extensive datasets such as ImageNet, CIFAR- 10, and CIFAR-100, for general tasks
like image classification. In the context of breast cancer detection, these models can be fine-tuned to classify
breast cancer images such as benign, malignant, and normal. These DL models initially capture broad features
like shapes, edges, and textures, which help recognize and differentiate complex patterns in medical images21.
Unlike traditional feature extraction methods that rely on manually crafted features based on expert knowledge,
modern techniques like DL and TL automate the process22. While both approaches have value, selecting the
most relevant features is key to reducing extraction time, optimizing computational resources, and improving
efficiency.
Despite significant advancements existing methodologies often fail to exploit the complementary strengths
of deep and handcrafted features. While DL models excel at capturing high-level semantics, traditional
methods like Gabor filters and wavelet transforms provide valuable texture-based features. Addressing this
gap, the present study proposes a hybrid feature fusion approach that integrates DL features from models such
as ResNet50, InceptionV3, and MobileNetV2 with traditional texture descriptors. This combination provides
a more comprehensive representation of breast cancer images. Another challenge in medical imaging is class
imbalance, which can bias models and reduce accuracy. Our approach mitigates this by applying systematic
statistical feature selection and employing ensemble classifiers capable of handling imbalanced datasets. The
main contributions of this research are as follows:

• Developed a unique framework that fuses both deep features from transfer learning models like ResNet50,
InceptionV3, and MobileNetV2 with traditional features from Gabor filters and Wavelet transforms. This
hybrid approach captures both high-level semantics and low-level textures, improving breast cancer image
representation in mammograms and ultrasounds, making it one of the few methods to integrate multi-modal
data for enhanced detection.
• Applied image enhancement techniques like CLAHE, Wavelet Transform, and sharpening to improve mam-
mogram quality. Used segmentation methods, including multi-threshold with Otsus method, to accurately
isolate Region of Interest’s (ROIs). These enhancements help the model better detect abnormalities in noisy or
low-contrast images, further improving the robustness of the model.
• Applied a systematic statistical feature selection process to identify the most discriminative features, reducing
the original pool of 218,072 to a robust set of 600, thereby optimizing classification performance by focusing
on the most relevant features.

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• Utilized state-of-the-art ensemble learning algorithms (XGBoost, AdaBoost, and CatBoost) to classify breast
cancer using the integrated feature set, demonstrating their effectiveness in improving classification accuracy
and robustness when applied to both mammogram and ultrasound data.
• The proposed hybrid feature fusion method is evaluated separately on publicly available mammogram (Mi-
ni-DDSM, INbreast) and ultrasound (Rodrigues, BUSI) datasets. This comprehensive evaluation across dif-
ferent clinical environments and imaging modalities highlights the generalizability and effectiveness of the
method for breast cancer detection in real-world clinical settings.

In contrast to traditional DL models that rely solely on deep features from pre-trained models, our proposed
approach introduces a hybrid feature fusion mechanism. This method combines deep learning features from
models like ResNet50, InceptionV3, and MobileNetV2 with traditional texture-based features extracted using
Gabor filters and wavelet transforms. Unlike models that focus only on high-level semantic features or rely
solely on handcrafted features, our approach merges both types of features to provide a more comprehensive
representation of breast cancer images, improving detection performance across diverse datasets. The remainder
of this paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 reviews the literature and related work, Sect. 3 outlines the materials
and methods used in this research, Sect. 4 offers a detailed discussion of the experiments and results, and Sect. 5
concludes this paper with future directions.

Literature review
Recent advancements in medical imaging have significantly improved breast cancer detection and classification.
Automated computer vision techniques now support early diagnosis and treatment, providing time-efficient and
reliable assistance for radiologists23. Various imaging modalities, including mammography (MG), ultrasound
(US), computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have been widely employed for
breast cancer analysis24.
A DenseNet-II Neural Network model achieved 94.55% accuracy on the DDSM dataset using 10-fold cross-
validation by integrating handcrafted features such as Gabor Initial Spatial Transform (GIST), Histogram of
Oriented Gradients (HOG), Local Binary Patterns (LBP), and Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT)25. Deep
transfer learning models, including ResNet, DenseNet, and VGG, demonstrated classification accuracies of
87.93% and 90.91% across INbreast and CBIS-DDSM datasets, while pre-trained CNNs like ResNet50 achieved
88% accuracy in detecting mammograms abnormalities26.
Further improvements are achieved with a deep CNN (ResNet50) that employed image enhancement,
segmentation, and feature selection, achieving 93% accuracy on INbreast data27. Similarly, FV-Net processed
bilateral MG images with CLAHE and truncated normalization, achieving 87.34% accuracy28. Data augmentation
using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) enhanced ultrasound datasets and improved breast mass
classification performance29. Traditional approaches, such as Support Vector Machines (SVM) combined with
Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM) features and K-means segmentation, reported 94% accuracy in
tumor classification30.
Ultrasound imaging also demonstrated promising results. Custom CNN models achieved 96% accuracy on
Rodrigues dataset, with sensitivity of 97.3% and specificity of 94.12%31. Ensemble strategies combining VGGNet,
ResNet, and DenseNet yielded 94.62% accuracy32, while statistical modeling using Rician Inverse Gaussian
(RiIG) achieved 97.20% accuracy33. Feature selection techniques such as Minimum Redundancy Maximum
Relevance (mRMR) combined with SVM, reached 95.6% accuracy34.
Several studies optimized pre-trained CNN architectures, including AlexNet, DenseNet201, MobileNetV2,
ResNet18, ResNet50, VGG16, and Xception, using preprocessing methods such as resizing, augmentation,
and standardization35. Deep representation scaling (DRS) layers integrated into CNN blocks further improved
classification, achieving 91.5% accuracy and an Area Under the Curve (AUC) of 0.95536. Other approaches,
involving ROI cropping, noise removal, and RGB image fusion with VGG19, attained 87.9% accuracy across
benign and malignant classes37.
Hybrid and ensemble approaches also showed strong performance. Transfer learning models combined with
ensemble techniques, such as InceptionV3 with stacking, achieved an AUC of 0.94738. Graph Convolutional
Networks (GCN) analyzed malignancy patterns in ultrasound images, obtaining 94.37% accuracy by leveraging
clinical features such as WH-ratio, Harris Corner, and Circularity39. Hybrid CNN classifiers integrating MG
and US datasets demonstrated improved performance by combining handcrafted features (e.g., LBP, HOG) with
deep features, classified using ML algorithms such as XGBoost, MLP, and AdaBoost22.
Classical ML classifiers, including SVM, Random Forest, K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), and Naïve Bayes,
achieved accuracies up to 95.6% with 10-fold cross-validation40. Transfer learning methods such as DenseNet201
and MobileNetV2 reported accuracies of 92.67% and 93.41% on MG and US datasets, respectively41. Pre-
processing methods also played an essential role: for instance, the Modified High Boosting Laplacian of Gaussian
(LoGMHP) filter42, when applied with AlexNet, ResNet18, and MobileNetV2, optimized performance on MG
and US images.
One prominent work by Puttegowda et al.43 utilized MG and US images from the Mini-DDSM and BUSI
datasets, incorporating DL models like ResNet-18, achieving an impressive 93.78% accuracy for the classification
of benign and malignant cases. Similarly, another study focused on ultrasound images, using a multimodal
deep learning approach for 290 breast masses from a Breast Ultrasound dataset, reporting 86% accuracy44.
A key contribution from Ahmad et al.45 involved the application of YOLO for detection and ResUNet for
segmentation, using the CBIS-DDSM mammogram dataset, achieving a stellar accuracy of 99.16%. Moreover,
a hybrid CNN model employed with VGG16 and PCA for feature reduction46, achieving 99.5% accuracy for
histopathological images. This is further complemented by47, which utilized BreakHis-400x and BUSI datasets,
deploying DenseNet121 for classification, showing accuracy rates of 93.97% and 89.87%, respectively.

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References Year Contribution and focus area Models and techniques used Limitations and observations
34 CNN-based classification using Hybrid CNN integrating AlexNet, ResNet50, and MobileNetV2. Limited pre-processing and imbalanced
2021
mRMR with US images. SVM and KNN classifiers used. augmentation. Performance can be improved.
53 CNN-based method for MG and Max-pooling and average-pooling layers tested. Evaluated on two No handcrafted features. Manual ROI extraction
2022
US images. US and three MG datasets. introduces variability.
Manual ROI selection may introduce variability.
41 Multi-modal classification using Feature-level fusion with cubic SVM. Pre-processing includes
2023 Limited dataset size. No comparison with public
MG and US fusion. ROI selection and augmentation.
datasets.
37 CNN-based RGB fusion of US Pre-processing includes noise removal and RGB fusion. VGG19 R-CNN segmentation may introduce noise.
2023
datasets. used for classification. Accuracy may be affected.
54 Hybrid CNN model for MG and Hybrid CNN combining ShuffleNet, ResNet, and probability- Pre-processing details unclear. Individual model
2023
US datasets. based weighting. accuracies not reported.
22 Combined deep and handcrafted DenseNet201 for deep features, LBP and HOG for handcrafted Manual segmentation may introduce subjectivity.
2023
features for MG and US datasets. features. XGBoost, MLP, and AdaBoost for classification. Feature selection could improve generalization.
27 MG image-based breast cancer CLAHE for contrast enhancement, segmentation using Dataset limited to INbreast. No comparison with
2023
diagnosis. thresholding. ResNet50 used for classification. other CNN models.
39 GCN-based malignancy detection Seven clinical features analyzed using ANOVA. Pearson Detects malignancy patterns only. Clinical
2024
using clinical features. correlation used for edges. markers may introduce noise.
28 FV-Net model for MG CLAHE, BRD, and truncated normalization applied. No comparison with other TL models. Manual
2024
classification. EfficientNet-b0 used for feature extraction. segmentation not performed.
42 LoGMHB-based classification for Data augmentation and LoGMHB filtering applied. AlexNet, LoGMHB filtering may affect model
2024
MG and US images. ResNet, and MobileNetV2 used. generalization. Overall accuracy not reported.

Table 1. Summary of current approaches for detection and classification of breast cancer.

Dataset Name Modality Resolution (Pixels) Image format Bit format Total images Normal Benign Malignant
Mini-DDSM 1024 × 1024 PNG 16-Bit Grayscale 600 200 200 200
MG
INbreast 3328 × 4084 DICOM 16-Bit Grayscale 376 67 220 49
57 × 75
Rodrigues BMP 08-Bit Grayscale 250 – 100 150
US 161 × 199
BUSI 500 × 500 PNG 08-Bit Grayscale 780 133 210 437

Table 2. Dataset details of both imaging modalities.

The study conducted by Qasrawi et al.48 applied a hybrid ensemble model and CLAHE for ultrasound
image enhancement, achieving 94% overall accuracy, with higher accuracy for benign (91.4%) and malignant
cases (84%). The paper discusses the use of a novel hybrid framework, the convolutional neural bidirectional
feature pyramid network (CNBiFPN), designed for early detection and precise localization of breast cancer in
CT scan images. The model achieves a significant classification accuracy of 96.11%, outperforming traditional
models such as CNN and CNN-HD, which had accuracies of 94.44% and 95.01%, respectively49. Another, study
demonstrated that optimizing the ENN model with different optimization algorithms, such as ADAM, RMSProp,
and SGD, improved classification accuracy50. The ADAM optimizer achieved the highest accuracy of 98.99% on
the training set, with a 95.00% accuracy on the test set. Several studies are conducted using various pre-trained
CNN models, such as InceptionV3, ResNet152V2, MobileNetV2, VGG-16 and DenseNet-121, SVM, GCN and
attention mechanisms51,52.
Table 1 summarizes the existing techniques, including models, methods used, reported limitations, and key
observations for breast cancer detection and classification.

Material and methods

This section presents details of the datasets used for our research and the detailed workflow of the proposed
approach.

Datasets
Mammogram and ultrasound images are used for multi-modal breast cancer detection, with datasets from
publicly available repositories. The Mini-DDSM53 comprises 9684 X-ray images from 2,620 cases, including
both Craniocaudal (CC) and Mediolateral Oblique (MLO) views. The MLO images are taken at 30 or 60 degrees,
while CC images are captured from above. The INbreast dataset55, developed at the University of Porto, contains
410 images from 115 patients in 16-bit DICOM format, classified as normal, benign, or malignant, with both
MLO and CC view. For ultrasound, the Rodrigues dataset38 from Mendeley Data includes 250 grayscale images
(150 malignant, 100 benign). The BUSI dataset53 from Kaggle contains 780 grayscale images from 600 women
(133 normal, 210 malignant, 437 benign).
To balance sizes, a subset of 600 Mini-DDSM images (200 each of normal, malignant, and benign) was used.
INbreast was divided into two classes (67 normal, 269 abnormal) for comparison with the binary Rodrigues
dataset. Table 2 summarizes all datasets, and Fig. 1 shows sample images: A–C (Mini-DDSM), D–E (INbreast),
F–G (Rodrigues), H–J (BUSI).

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Fig. 1. Sample images from different breast cancer categories used in this study: (A−C) Mini-DDSM MG
dataset images, (D−E) INbreast MG dataset images, and (F−G) Rodrigues US dataset images, (H−J) BUSI US
dataset images.

Methodology
An efficient model for breast cancer identification and detection is presented, comprising several stages: image
collection, pre-processing, data augmentation, image enhancement, segmentation, feature extraction, feature
selection, feature fusion, performance evaluation, and final results. The detailed workflow is presented in Fig. 2.

Collection of images
The mammogram and ultrasound datasets used in this research are described in Table 2.

Pre-processing
Pre-processing was applied to all MG and US images to ensure compatibility with model requirements and
computational efficiency before input to the pre-trained TL models (Resnet50, InceptionV3, and MobileNetV2).
As datasets contained unequal image sizes, all images were resized to 224 × 224. Pixel values were normalized to

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Fig. 2. Block diagram illustrating the workflow of the proposed hybrid model for breast cancer detection.

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the range [0, 1] by dividing each by 255.0, improving convergence and robustness35. The scaling was performed
using Eq. (1).
original_image
Scaled_image = (1)
255.0

Here, original_image represents the pixel values of the original image, whereas Scaled_image represents the image
after scaling, with each pixel value divided by 255.0. Mean subtraction and standard deviation normalization
were applied to centralize pixel values and reduce illumination variations35. The mean and std were calculated
per RGB channel, and images were normalized using Eq. (2):
original image − µ
normalize_image = (2)
std

Here, original_image is the input image, µ represents the mean value for each channel and std denotes the
standard deviation for each channel. This ensures numerical stability, faster convergence, and consistent pre-
processing across MG and US datasets.

Data augmentation
Training data augmentation is used to address class imbalance and increase the size of the dataset without
the need for additional labeled data. This approach makes the model more robust to variations and helps
prevent overfitting21. The augmentation is applied only to the training data of all MG and US images. The
applied augmentation technique is Shearing which is a transformation that shifts one part of an image in a
fixed direction, keeping the rest of the image fixed. Both the horizontal and vertical shearing are applied to
the images with the angles [−0.20, 0.20]. The augmentation ratio is set to 1:1, meaning the augmented dataset
contained an equal number of samples as the original dataset. It enhances robustness by exposing the model
to various perspectives. The shear angle range [−0.20, 0.20] was chosen based on empirical testing to balance
image variation without distorting image quality. Here, −0.20 means Minimum Absolute Shear and 0.20 means
Maximum Absolute Shear. Shearing may create undefined regions in images. Setting fill mode to nearest resolves
this by filling gaps with the nearest pixel values, preserving image consistency and ensuring augmented images
remain representative of the original data. We also tested the ’reflect’ mode, but no significant performance
improvement was observed, therefore, the ’nearest’ mode was selected for its simplicity and computational
efficiency.

Image enhancement
The image enhancement is applied to MG images only from both datasets after the pre-processing of images.
US images do not need to be enhanced as they are already small in size and ROI is extracted. However, MG
images need to be enhanced due to low contrast and noise in the images. The image enhancement improves the
contrast and removes the noise for better generalization of microcalcifications or masses. This stage is further
effective in the image segmentation. Figures 3A, B, C, D and 4A, B, C, D show the image enhancement on Mini-
DDSM dataset Images and INbreast dataset images, respectively. The images are enhanced by applying different
techniques such as CLAHE, Wavelet Transform, and Sharpening of the images.

CLAHE The CLAHE enhances image contrast by applying histogram equalization in even small parts or re-
gions of an image and also helps to reduce noise. It improves visualization of breast tissues and structures for the
detection of abnormalities. The CLAHE operates by dividing the image into small sections known as tiles (e.g.,
8×8). It then applies histogram equalization to each tile independently. To limit the noise amplification, CLAHE
applies a contrast limiting procedure, which redistributes the histogram values and clips it at a predefined con-
trast limit before redistributing the clipped pixels equally across the histogram56. Figures 3B and 4B show the

Fig. 3. Sample enhanced image from Mini-DDSM Dataset: (A) Pre-processed Image, (B) CLAHE Image, (C)
Wavelet Transform Image, (D) Sharpened Image.

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Fig. 4. Sample enhanced image from INbreast dataset: (A) pre-processed image, (B) CLAHE image, (C)
wavelet transformed image, (D) sharpened image.

CLAHE application on the original images of the Mini-DDSM and INbreast datasets, respectively, and Eq. (3)
represents its mathematical formulation.
( ) I(x,y)
∑
N −1
Cnew (x, y) = H(i)(3)
max(H)
i=0

Here, Cnew (x, y) is the new pixel value after CLAHE, N is the number of pixel values (usually 256 for 8-bit
images), H(i) represents the histogram frequency of the pixel intensity i in the local region or tile, where I(x, y)
is the original pixel value, and max(H) is the maximum value of the histogram after clipping.

Wavelet transform After applying CLAHE to enhance local contrast, the images are further processed using
the wavelet transform to decompose them into different frequency components. This method focuses on the
lower-frequency components while allowing both spatial and frequency localization. The Haar wavelet trans-
form57 is used to calculate these low frequencies, which smooths the image and enhances its edges and textures.
The 2D Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) decomposes an image into four sub-bands:

• LL (Approximation) Captures the low-frequency components.

• LH (Horizontal Detail) Captures horizontal edge information.
• HL (Vertical Detail) Captures vertical edge information.
• HH (Diagonal Detail) Captures diagonal detail components.

The wavelet transform is mathematically represented in Eq. (4).

DWT
I(x, y) −−−→ {LL, LH, HL, HH}(4)

Here, I is the input CLAHE_image, x and y are the image coordinates, denoting the horizontal and vertical pixel
positions, LL = L (I (x, y)), LH = H (L (I (x, y))), HL = L (H (I (x, y))), and HH = H (H (I (x, y))).
The LL band provides a smoothed approximation of the image, while LH, HL, and HH capture various details
in different orientations.
Once the CLAHE-enhanced image is decomposed into wavelet sub-bands, the original image can be
reconstructed using the inverse DWT (IDWT). This restores the image representation in the spatial domain
while retaining essential features extracted during decomposition. The process is mathematically represented
in Eq. (5).
IDWT
{LL, LH, HL, HH} −−−−→ I ′ (x, y)(5)

Here, I ′ (x, y) is the input CLAHE_image. Figures 3C and 4C represent the Reconstructed Wavelet Transform
images of Mini-DDSM and INbreast datasets, respectively.

Sharpening of the images Following wavelet transform, images are further sharpened to enhance edge infor-
mation and fine details. Each image is first decomposed into frequency components, after which a sharpening
function is applied using a convolutional filter. This process highlights subtle features58, aiding in the detection
of microcalcifications and other small abnormalities in the image. The sharpened wavelet-reconstructed images
from the Mini-DDSM and INbreast datasets, are shown in Fig. 3D and 4D, respectively. The sharpening function
is mathematically expressed in Eq. (6).
Isharpened = I + α(I − Blur(I))(6)

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Here, Isharpened is the sharpened image, I is the original image, α is the scaling factor (set to −0.5), and Blur(I)
denotes the Gaussian-blurred version of the original [Link] operation enhances local contrast, emphasizing
edges and fine structural patterns critical for breast cancer detection.

Image segmentation
After boosting contrast and sharpness in the image enhancement stage, the next stage involves segmenting
the image into distinct regions. This process identifies and isolates region of interest (ROI) by leveraging the
enhanced features, thereby enabling precise analysis and accurate detection of abnormalities59.

Image segmentation on Mini-DDSM MG dataset The Mini-DDSM MG dataset contains tumor or lesion
regions marked with a red circle in benign and malignant class images, while normal images appear clean with
no visible abnormality. Creating a mask is essential for extracting the ROI from these images60. In this step, the
mask image is generated and saved for further analysis. Figure 5A, B and C illustrates the segmentation process
applied to the enhanced Mini-DDSM images.
For each image in the dataset, the standard Blue, Green, and Red (BGR) format is first converted into the
Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV) format, which simplifies the detection of specific colors. In this case, red color
detection was used to identify the highlighted tumor regions. A binary black-and-white mask was then created,
corresponding to the largest red contour area within the image. The complete procedure of contour detection
and mask generation is presented in Algorithm 1.

Algorithm 1. Red color contour detection and binary mask creation.

Image segmentation on INbreast MG dataset Unlike the Mini-DDSM dataset, the INbreast dataset does not
provide highlighted tumor regions or mask images. Therefore, the image enhancement process shown in Fig.
4A, B, C and D is is essential for segmenting tumor region or lesions in benign and malignant images. The ROI
is segmented directly from the enhanced images. Since the images are already pre-processed, additional steps
are required to isolate abnormal regions.
Otsu’s multi-thresholding method61 is applied to the grayscale images to classify them into three distinct
intensity classes. Based on these thresholds, the images are digitized into separate regions. The brightest region,
corresponding to the highest intensity class, is then segmented, as shown in Fig. 6B. For Otsu’s method with k
thresholds, the between-class variance is defined in Eq. (7).

∑
k

σb2 = ωi (µi − µT )2 (7)

i=1

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Fig. 5. Mask creation and application process on Mini-DDSM Dataset: (A) Enhanced with highlighted tumor
area, (B) Binary mask of tumor highlighted region, (C) Applying binary mask to enhanced image.

Fig. 6. Image segmentation and mask creation process for the INbreast dataset: (A) Enhanced image, (B)
Segmented image showing tumor regions, (C) Binary mask highlighting the segmented areas, and (D) The
mask applied to the original image to isolate ROI.

where, ωi is the weight (probability) of the i-th class, µi is the mean intensity of the i-th clas, and µT is the overall
mean intensity of the image. The segmented region is then converted into a binary image. The binary conversion
B (x,y) is expressed in Eq. (8).
{
1 if I(x, y) ≥ t
B(x, y) = 0 otherwise (8)

where, I(x, y) represents the intensity value of the pixel located at coordinates (x, y) in the grayscale image, and t
is the threshold value (0–255) distinguishing foreground from background. Morphological opening and closing
operations are applied to the binary segmented image to remove noise and refine the segmented area. A 3 × 3
kernel is used for these operations. The morphological operations are defined in Eqs. (9) and (10).
Bopened (x, y) = min B(x − i, y − j)(9)
(i,j)∈K

Bclosed (x, y) = max Bopened (x − i, y − j)(10)

(i,j)∈K

where K is the 3 × 3 kernel, min is the erosion operation, and max is the dilation operation. Contours are then
detected in the cleaned segmented image. The boundaries of connected components are identified within Bclosed.
If multiple contours are present, the largest contour is selected, assuming it corresponds to the ROI. A bounding
rectangle is computed around this contour, and the ROI is extracted from the original grayscale image. The
processes of finding the largest contour, creating a bounding rectangle, and extracting the final ROI image are
mathematically represented in Eqs. (11), (12), and (13).
Clargest = arg max Area(C) (11)
C∈Contours

R = BoundingBox(Clargest ) (12)

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ROI = I[xmin : xmax , ymin : ymax ] (13)

where Area(C) is the number of pixels within contour C, the bounding box R is represented by its top-left
(xmin , ymin ) and bottom-right (xmax , ymax ) coordinates, ROI is the final extracted Region of Interest.
Finally, binary thresholding is employed to generate a mask for the segmented image, as shown in Fig. 6C.
Pixels with intensity values greater than or equal to 127 are assigned a value of 255 (white), while those below 127
are set to 0 (black). Once the binary mask is created, it is applied to the segmented image, as demonstrated in Fig.
6D. A bitwise AND operation is used, preserving pixel values where the mask is white (255) and setting all others
to 0. Figure 6A, B, C and D provide a comprehensive overview of the image segmentation, mask creation, and
application processes on the enhanced images. Additionally, Algorithm 2 outlines the step-by-step procedure for
generating the binary mask and applying it to the original image.

Algorithm 2. Mask creation and application on INbreast segmented images.

Image segmentation process for rodrigues US dataset The Rodrigues dataset is relatively small and the ROI is
already cropped in the available images. Therefore, no additional segmentation is applied beyond the pre-pro-
cessing steps. The dataset images are directly passed to the proposed models.

Image segmentation process for BUSI US dataset The BUSI dataset includes a folder containing binary mask
images that highlight tumor or lesion regions. For accurate classification of benign, malignant, and normal
US images, the pre-processed images are combined with their corresponding masks to isolate the ROI. The
mask-application process follows the same procedure described in Algorithm 2. The resulting segmentation
steps for BUSI images are illustrated in Figure 7A, B and C.

Fig. 7. Image segmentation process for the BUSI dataset: (A) Pre-processed image with tumor areas, (B)
Binary mask image corresponding to the tumor regions, and (C) The mask applied to the original image to
isolate the ROI for classification.

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Feature extraction
In the feature extraction process, both deep learning-based and traditional features are derived from the images
to aid in breast cancer classification and detection. Traditional features, such as Gabor filters and wavelet
transforms, captured low-level texture and spatial details62, while deep features provided high-level semantic
representations through complex neural networks. Analyzing the correlation between these feature sets
revealed their complementary nature–traditional features preserved fine-grained structural information that
deep learning models might overlook, whereas deep features captured abstract patterns beyond the reach of
conventional methods. By integrating both, we achieved a more comprehensive representation of the image data,
enhancing classification accuracy and improving overall model performance.

Deep features To enhance our feature set and leverage modern advancements in ML, deep features are extract-
ed. TL allows the transfer of learned features from a large dataset, such as ImageNet, to a smaller, domain-specif-
ic dataset to improve performance and reduce training time. In this study, we use three TL models: InceptionV3,
ResNet50, and MobileNetV2. These models are pretrained on ImageNet, which consists of natural images. While
ImageNet images differ significantly from medical images in terms of modality and visual characteristics, the
generic visual features (such as edges, textures, and shapes) learned from ImageNet have been shown to be
transferable to a variety of tasks, including breast tumor classification. In our approach, the output from the
penultimate layer of each model was used to extract the features, enabling us to capture high-level semantic
information relevant to the task at hand. This approach enables us to capture high-level features that are critical
for our specific task.
The feature extraction is completed by including the “GlobalAveragePooling2D” layer in each of these pre-
trained models. This layer reduces the spatial dimensions of each feature map into a single vector, resulting in
a compact representation of the extracted features. All layers of the pre-trained models are locked to maintain
fixed weights throughout the feature extraction process.
For a fair comparison, the same hyperparameters values are maintained for both the US and MG image
datasets. Hyperparameters and their corresponding values used in the model creation and compilation
are provided in Table 4. A total of 167,872 deep features are extracted from these three models. A detailed
description, structure, and working of each TL model are discussed below.
InceptionV3 transfer learning structure
In this research, the inceptionV3 deep CNN architecture is utilized, a model specifically designed for image
classification. Developed by Google, InceptionV3 is capable of capturing complex patterns in images while
maintaining computational efficiently. The model integrates multiple layers and operations within its architecture,
comprising a total of 48 layers. Key components include convolutional layers, max pooling operations, inception
modules, factorization, auxiliary classifiers, and batch normalization. A visual representation of the InceptionV3
model is provided in Fig. 8.
ResNet50 transfer learning structure
In this research, the ResNet50 model, a TL architecture introduced by Microsoft, was employed. ResNet50
leverages residual learning to effectively train very deep networks, addressing the common issue of vanishing
gradients. The model comprises 50 layers, including convolutional, pooling, and fully connected layers,
organized into blocks of residual units. Pre-trained on the large-scale ImageNet dataset - containing millions of
images across thousands of categories - ResNet50 provides rich and diverse feature representations that can be

Fig. 8. InceptionV3 TL model architecture.

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Fig. 9. ResNet50 TL model architecture.

Fig. 10. MobileNetV2 TL model architecture.

fine-tuned for breast cancer image classification. A visual representation of the ResNet50 architecture is shown
in Fig. 9.
MobileNetV2 transfer learning structure
MobileNetV2, a deep CNN model developed by Google, is also used in this research. Designed for efficient
performance on mobile and embedded vision applications, MobileNetV2 achieves lightweight computation
without compromising accuracy. Its core innovation lies in the use of depthwise separable convolutions,
combined with linear bottlenecks, which streamline the architecture and improve efficiency. The model
comprises multiple layers, including standard convolutions, depthwise separable convolutions, and bottleneck
layers, which collectively enhance training robustness and prevent saturation. A visual representation of the
MobileNetV2 architecture is shown in Fig. 10.

Traditional features Traditional features are also extracted from the images, specifically focusing on Gabor
and Wavelet features. Gabor features are well-regarded in image processing for texture analysis due to their
ability to capture spatial frequency characteristics63, making them highly effective for edge detection and texture
representation.
In contrast, wavelet features capture both spatial and frequency information at different scales, facilitating
multi-resolution analysis of images. By decomposing images into different frequency components, wavelet
transforms allow for the analysis of complex patterns and structures. The proposed approach is strengthened by
using both types of features for breast cancer detection, improving the models robustness and accuracy.
Gabor filter features
Gabor filters are linear filters used for edge detection, texture representation, and disparity measurement64. In
the context of the proposed research, Gabor filters features are extracted from US and MG images. The extraction
process involves converting the image to grayscale and then applying Gabor filters with various orientations (0,
π/4, π/2, 3π/4) and frequencies (0.1, 0.3, 0.5). The real and imaginary parts of the filtered images are then
computed, and their means are taken as the features. The texture information at different scales and orientations

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Fig. 11. Gabor filter process.

Fig. 12. DWT features process.

is captured in this method. A total of 24 Gabor features are extracted per image. The Gabor filter process applied
to the images is shown in Fig. 11.
Wavelet transform features
Wavelet transforms are another powerful method for feature extraction, offering a multi-resolution analysis
of images65. Wavelet transforms use a time-frequency representation, allowing both spatial and frequency
information to be captured simultaneously. This is achieved by decomposing an image into a series of wavelets,
which are small waves that vary in scale and position.
For the wavelet features extraction, all images are converted to grayscale. The Discrete Wavelet Transform
(DWT) is then applied using the Haar wavelet, decomposing each image into four distinct sub-bands: the
approximation coefficients (LL) and three detail coefficients (LH, HL, HH). The low-frequency content of the
image is represented by the approximation coefficients, while variations in the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal
directions are captured by the detail coefficients. The function then flattens and concatenates these coefficients
into a single feature vector, which represents the images wavelet features.
Equations for wavelet transform features are presented in section 3.2.4. A pictorial overview of the complete
DWT process is illustrated in Fig. 12. During this feature extraction phase, a total of 50,176 wavelet features are
extracted per image.

Feature selection
The total number of features extracted from Gabor, wavelet, and deep models make a large feature set. However,
not all features are equally significant regarding efficiency and accuracy. Therefore, feature selection is conducted
to find out the most relevant features from a larger set, which improves model performance and decreases
computational complexity. This process involves evaluating and ranking features according to their statistical
significance concerning the target variable66. This univariate technique assesses the significance of each feature
based on its statistical relationship with the target variable, specifically using the ANOVA F-value.
This metric assesses the variance between feature groups compared to the variance within each group,
highlighting features that most effectively differentiate the target variable. A technique for selecting features
involves scoring them using the ANOVA F-value and then choosing the top-scoring features based on this
evaluation. This feature selection stage helps in balancing between retaining sufficient information and reducing
dimensionality. The F-value is calculated using Eq. (14).
Between − group variance
F = (14)
W ithin − group variance

Between-Group Variance measures the variance of the feature values between different classes or groups and is
calculated using Eq. (15).
∑k
ni ( Xi − X )2
Between − group variance = i=1 (15)
k−1

where ni = Number of samples in group i, Xi = Mean of the feature values in group i, X = Overall mean of the
feature values, and k = Number of groups. Within-Group Variance measures the variance of the feature values
within each class or group and is calculated using Eq. (16).

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∑k ∑ni
ni (Xij − Xi )2
Within-group variance =
i=1 j=1 (16)
N −k

where Xij represents the feature value of the j -th sample in group i, and the total number of samples is
represented by N .
Before feeding the feature set into the classifiers, feature selection is performed using the ANOVA F-value
method. This method ranked the features based on their ability to distinguish between the malignant, benign,
and normal classes, and the top 600 most discriminative features by evaluating the variance between feature
groups are selected. No additional dimensionality reduction techniques, such as Principal Component Analysis
(PCA) or Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), are applied, as the feature selection process is sufficient for
reducing the feature space to the most relevant features for classification.

Feature fusion
In this specific scenario, the top 10 Gabor features are selected out of 24. For the wavelet features, only the top
40 features are selected from the initial total of 50,176. Similarly, the top 550 deep features are retained from a
total of 167,872. These features are concatenated into a single hybrid feature vector, integrating both high-level
and low-level features for improved classification accuracy. Consequently, the final feature fusion set comprises
600 features selected from an original pool of 218,072, makeing a feature vector, which significantly reduces the
number of features while preserving the most valuable ones for analysis. Figure 13 contains a detailed overview
of feature fusion.

Classification
The Best Features are now selected in the feature selection stage. Fusion of these features is also completed
and a final feature vector is obtained successfully. This research utilizes several popular ensemble learning
classifiers, including XGBoost, AdaBoost, and CatBoost. These methods are known for their ability to handle
imbalanced datasets effectively by focusing on the minority classes during the classification process, thus
improving the model’s performance on underrepresented classes. In this study, hyperparameters are selected
based on preliminary experiments and established best practices, rather than through systematic optimization
methods like grid search or random search. We empirically chose a n-estimators of 500, a learning rate of 0.1,
and a random-state of 42 to balance performance and computational efficiency. The detailed description of each
ensemble classifier is discussed below.
XGBoost In this research, the XGBoost classifier is utilized, a powerful ensemble algorithm that leverages
gradient boosting to enhance model performance. An ensemble of weak learners, usually decision trees (DT), is
created, where each subsequent tree is trained to rectify the mistakes of its predecessor67. This iterative process
minimizes a loss function using gradient descent, resulting in a robust and optimized model. Predictions are
refined at each boosting iteration by combining the previous prediction with adjustments from the new weak
learner, scaled by a learning rate. XGBoost also incorporates a loss function to measure prediction errors and
includes a regularization term to control model complexity, preventing overfitting and ensuring generalization.
AdaBoost AdaBoost combines weak classifiers into a strong classifier by focusing more on instances
misclassified in previous [Link] adjusts weights to emphasize harder-to-classify examples, thereby
improving accuracy.
The weight of each weak classifier is updated based on its performance, assigning higher importance to
classifiers with lower error rates. The final strong classifier is then computed as a weighted sum of all weak
classifiers.
CatBoost CatBoost is a gradient-boosting algorithm that is used in this research. It is designed to effectively
manage categorical features and minimize [Link] employs several techniques to enhance performance,
including ordered boosting to address the problem of target leakage. It lessens the likelihood of overfitting,
providing a more reliable model by building trees based on an ordered permutation of the data.

Fig. 13. Diagrammatic flow of the feature fusion process of deep and traditional features.

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Training Testing
Dataset Total samples samples samples
N B M N B M N B M
Mini-DDSM 200 200 200 180 180 180 20 20 20
INbreast 67 269 60 242 7 27
Rodrigues − 100 150 − 70 105 − 30 45
BUSI 133 210 437 93 147 305 40 63 132

Table 3. MG and US images dataset splitting into training and testing. N, Normal; B, Benign; M, Malignant.

Hyperparameter Value
Image size 224×224
Optimizer Adam
Max Epochs 12
Batch size 8
Number of units 1024
Activation function ReLU
Regularization type & parameter L2 = 0.001
Learning rate 1e-3
Loss function Categorical Cross Entropy
Activation function (final layer) Softmax
Sparsity level 0.5
CNN weights ImageNet

Table 4. Hyperparameters and their values for TL models.

By integrating these advanced classification techniques; XGBoost, AdaBoost, and CatBoost significantly
improve classification accuracy, demonstrating the effectiveness of boosting methods in handling complex
datasets.
The methodology of this research proposes a hybrid feature fusion method that integrates deep features from
pre-trained models (ResNet50, InceptionV3, and MobileNetV2) with traditional features (Gabor filters and
wavelet transforms). The feature fusion process combines these features to capture both high-level semantics and
low-level textures, ensuring enhanced breast cancer detection performance. The Methodology section outlines
all necessary steps for replicating this process, including dataset preparation, image pre-processing, and the
feature fusion and classification pipeline.

Results and discussions

The results of the proposed hybrid framework are presented and analyzed in this section. A comprehensive
evaluation is carried out across mammogram and ultrasound datasets to demonstrate the robustness and
generalizability of the approach. The subsections are organized to highlight different aspects of the analysis,
including the performance of transfer learning models on individual datasets, the effectiveness of pre-processing
and enhancement techniques, the role of segmentation in isolating regions of interest, the contribution of
traditional and deep feature extraction methods, the impact of hybrid feature fusion, and the comparative
performance of ensemble classifiers. Each subsection provides an in-depth discussion supported by experimental
results, illustrating how the proposed methodology advances breast cancer detection and classification.

Distribution of the datasets

The MG and US images datasets are divided into training and testing sets with either two or three class
distributions, are shown in Table 3. It is worth noting that a 90–10 split is adopted for the mammogram datasets
(Mini-DDSM and INbreast) to preserve sufficient training samples in relatively balanced distributions, while
a 70–30 split is used for the ultrasound datasets (BUSI and Rodrigues) to ensure adequate evaluation of their
more imbalanced and heterogeneous data. For the Mini-DDSM dataset, a total of 600 images are used, with 540
images allocated for training and 60 for testing. The INbreast dataset consisted of 336 images, with 302 used for
training and 34 for testing. The Rodrigues dataset consisted of 250 images, divided into 175 for training and 75
for testing. Lastly, the BUSI dataset included 780 images, with 545 images used for training and 235 for testing.

Environmental setup
The experiments are conducted using a Dell laptop with the following specifications: Intel Core i5-3337U CPU
@ 1.80GHz, 8GB DDR3 RAM, x64-based processor, and a 512GB SSD running Windows 10 Pro. For model
training and evaluation, Google Colab was emplyed, providing a cloud-based Jupyter Notebook environment
with access to GPU and TPU resources. The environmental setup is configured with Python 3.7, TensorFlow

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2.4.1, and scikit-learn 0.24.2. Table 4 contains the hyperparameters and their values that are used for TL model
training and testing.
The models are trained using the Adam optimizer with a learning rate of 1e-3. This learning rate is chosen
based on empirical testing. A batch size of 8 is used due to hardware limitations and memory constraints. We
initially experimented with training for more than 12 epochs, but found that the results became stable after
12 epochs, with no significant improvement in training loss or validation accuracy. Therefore, 12 epochs are
deemed sufficient for initial testing and model evaluation.

Evaluation metrics
In this study, widely accepted metrics commonly employed in breast cancer screening, such as accuracy,
precision, specificity, sensitivity, and F1-Score are employed. These metrics are derived from the Confusion
Matrix (CM), which includes the following parameters: True Positive (TP), True Negative (TN), False Positive
(FP), and False Negative (FN).
The CM offers an overview of the models predictions versus actual labels, detailing TP, TN, FP, and FN
counts. It helps identify error types and provides insights for improvements. Model performance is further
evaluated using the Area Under the Curve (AUC), which measures the classifiers ability to distinguish between
benign, malignant, and normal classes–values closer to 1 indicate high effectiveness. AUCs are generated using
the predicted probabilities obtained from the predict-proba method. The roc-curve function is used to compute
the False Positive Rate (FPR) and True Positive Rate (TPR) for each class, and AUC values are calculated to
evaluate model performance. Classification accuracy is also computed as the ratio of correctly classified cases to
the total cases.

Experimental setup
The experiments are structured as follows:
Experiment 1: Evaluation using Mini-DDSM MG Dataset In this experiment, we evaluate the proposed
method on the Mini-DDSM mammogram dataset. The focus is to assess the model’s ability to detect breast
cancer in mammogram images, particularly concerning accuracy, precision, and recall.
Experiment 2: Evaluation using INBreast MG Dataset This experiment tests the model’s performance on the
INBreast mammogram dataset, allowing a comparison with Experiment 1 and evaluating the model’s robustness
across distinct mammogram images.
Experiment 3: Evaluation using Rodrigues US Dataset The third experiment shifts focus to the Rodrigues
ultrasound (US) dataset. It evaluates the hybrid model’s performance on ultrasound images, highlighting its
effectiveness in detecting breast cancer in a different imaging modality.
Experiment 4: Evaluation using BUSI US Dataset The final experiment assesses the model on the BUSI
ultrasound dataset. This phase helps gauge the model’s generalization ability across ultrasound data and provides
a comprehensive evaluation of performance across different modalities.
By structuring the experiments in this manner, we aim to clearly present the results for each dataset and
modality, enabling a deeper understanding of the model’s capabilities and areas for future enhancement.

Experiment 1: evaluation using mini-DDSM MG dataset

Table 5 shows the performance of three hyper-tuned ensemble classifiers applied to the dataset. The first metric
values are for benign class samples, the second metric values are for malignant class samples and the third metric
values are for normal class samples. Among these classifiers, the XGBoost Classifier achieved the highest test
accuracy at 95%, followed closely by the AdaBoost Classifier with 93.33% and the CatBoost classifier with a test
accuracy is 86.67%.
Figure 14 offers an in-depth comparison between the models predictions and the actual ground truth labels,
displaying the counts of TP, TN, FP, and FN.
To assess the performance of the proposed model, we employed the ROC curve illustrated in Fig. 14. This
curve enables the evaluation of the trade-off between sensitivity (True Positive Rate) and specificity (False
Positive Rate), offering valuable insights into the models diagnostic accuracy.
The model performs exceptionally well for both benign and malignant classes, achieving AUC values of 0.97
for XGBoost and CatBoost. In contrast, AdaBoost shows a slight decrease to 0.94, reflecting a minor variation in

Classifiers Accuracy (%) Precision (%) Recall (%) Specificity (%) F1-score AUC
90 95 95 0.95 0.97
XGBoost 95.00 95 90 90 0.97 0.97
100 100 100 1.00 1.00
88 70 95 0.78 0.94
AdaBoost 86.67 75 90 85 0.82 0.94
100 100 100 1.00 1.00
86 95 92 0.90 0.97
CatBoost 93.33 94 85 97 0.89 0.97
100 100 100 1.00 1.00

Table 5. Results on Mini-DDSM MG dataset.

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Fig. 14. CM and ROC corresponding to each ensemble classifier on Mini-DDSM MG dataset.

the models capacity to differentiate between these classes. Overall, the model exhibits high diagnostic accuracy
with minimal performance fluctuations.

Experiment 2: evaluation using INBreast MG dataset

Among the already discussed ensemble classifiers, XGBoost Classifier achieved the highest test accuracy at
97.06%, followed by CatBoost with 97.06% and AdaBoost test accuracy is 94.12%. Table 6 shows the detailed
results including accuracy, precision, recall, specificity, F1-score, and AUC values. The first metric values are for
abnormal class samples and the second metric values are for normal class samples.

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Classifiers Accuracy (%) Precision (%) Recall (%) Specificity (%) F1-score AUC
96 100 85 0.98 1.00
XGBoost 97.06
100 86 100 0.92 1.00
93 100 71 0.96 0.99
AdaBoost 94.12
100 71 100 0.83 0.99
96 100 85 0.98 1.00
CatBoost 97.06
100 86 100 0.92 1.00

Table 6. Results on INbreast MG dataset.

Figure 15 illustrates the CM and ROC curve corresponding to each ensemble classifier. The AUC for XGBoost
and CatBoost classifiers are 1.00 for the normal class and 1.00 for the abnormal class, indicating that the model
achieves complete discrimination without any false positives or false negatives. In these classifiers. Whereas for
the AdaBoost classifier ROC curve demonstrates slightly reduced performance, with an AUC of 0.99 for both
abnormal and normal classes. Overall, the classifiers demonstrate excellent diagnostic accuracy, with a minor
fluctuation observed in the AdaBoost classifier.

Experiment 3: evaluation using rodrigues US dataset

Table 7 shows the detailed results, the first metric values are for benign class samples and the second metric
values are for malignant class samples. Among these classifiers, XGBoost achieved the highest test accuracy at
98.67%, followed by AdaBoost with 98.67%. Whereas, the CatBoost classifier also performed well, with a test
accuracy of 96%.
Figure 16 illustrated the CM and ROC curve corresponding to each ensemble classifier on Rodrigues Dataset.
The AUC for all classifiers is 1.00 for the benign class and 1.00 for the malignant class, indicating that the model
accurately distinguishes between these classes without any misclassifications. Overall, the classifiers demonstrate
excellent diagnostic accuracy for all three classifiers.

Experiment 4: evaluation using BUSI US dataset

Table 8 shows the performance of the BUSI US dataset, the first metric values are for benign class samples, the
second metric values are for malignant class samples and the third metric values are for normal class samples.
Among these classifiers, XGBoost achieved the highest test accuracy at 97.02%, followed closely by CatBoost
with 94.89% and AdaBoost test accuracy is 92.77%.
Figure 17 illustrates the CM and ROC curve for all three ensemble classifiers. AUC for the XGBoost classifier
is 0.99 for benign, 0.99 for malignant, and 1.00 for normal, indicating that the model achieves high diagnostic
performance across all classes, with perfect discrimination for the normal class. AUC for the AdaBoost classifier
is 0.98 for benign, 0.97 for malignant, and 1.00 for the normal class. Whereas AUC for CatBoost is 0.99 for both
benign, 0.98 for malignant, and 1.00 for the normal class. Overall, the model demonstrates high diagnostic
accuracy with minimal fluctuations in performance.

Comparative analysis
In this section, the aforementioned ML classifiers with the datasets used in this research is compared. As shown in
Fig. 18, XGBoost and AdaBoost generally performed better, while CatBoost consistently achieved comparatively
lower accuracy. Similarly, Fig. 19, illustrates that the Rodrigues dataset achieved the highest accuracy, whereas
other datasets demonstrated relatively lower performance.
From Figs. 18 and 19, it can be concluded that XGBoost, AdaBoost, and CatBoost exhibited varying
performance across datasets, influenced by dataset characteristics. The Mini-DDSM dataset, being larger and
more balanced, enabled XGBoost to capture more complex patterns, leading to higher accuracy. In contrast,
AdaBoost faced challenges with Rodrigues, where the class imbalance (with fewer benign samples) led to
suboptimal performance. CatBoost, designed to handle categorical data effectively, performed comparatively
better on the BUSI dataset, where its robustness to noise and adaptability to smaller dataset proved advantageous.
These findings emphasize that dataset-specific characteristics, such as size, class distribution, and feature
diversity, play a crucial role in shaping classifier performance.
As discussed in Sect. 2, multiple pre-processing techniques, data augmentation strategies, and both TL and
ML models are applied. Additionally, different testing percentages are emplyed in the classification process. Such
variations can positively or negatively affect outcomes, making it important to evaluate each study within its own
context. To provide a comprehensive comparison, Tables 9, 10, 11 and 12 present year-wise classification results
for each dataset alongside the outcomes of the proposed model.
The Mini-DDSM dataset showed high performance, with XGBoost achieving 95.00% accuracy, further
supported by the ROC curves and confusion matrices. For the INbreast dataset, both XGBoost and CatBoost
achieved 97.06% accuracy, demonstrating strong performance with minimal misclassification. On the Rodrigues
ultrasound dataset, XGBoost and AdaBoost achieved excellent accuracy of 98.67%, as illustrated by ROC
analyses. Similarly, for the BUSI dataset, XGBoost also performed robustly with 97.02% accuracy.
Table 13, compares our proposed study with recent related works. The proposed approach demonstrates
significant performance improvements across multiple datasets, achieving 95% accuracy on Mini-DDSM,
97.06% on INbreast, 98.67% on Rodrigues, and 97.02% on BUSI. These results are competitive with state-of-
the-art methods, such as those achieving 99.16% with YOLO and ResUNet45 and 99.5% with hybrid CNN-

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Fig. 15. CM and ROC corresponding to each ensemble classifier on INbreast MG dataset.

VGG16 architectures46. However, our approach stands out due to its integration of traditional features (e.g.,
Gabor filters), which enhance robustness – particularly for ultrasound images, where deep learning models may
fail to capture fine textural patterns. Furthermore, our ensemble framework, combining XGBoost, AdaBoost,
and CatBoost, provides additional robustness by leveraging the strengths of multiple models. This is particularly
beneficial in handling class imbalance, a common challenge in medical imaging datasets.
Unlike studies that focus on a single modality or dataset, our work encompasses both mammogram and
ultrasound datasets, thereby offering broader generalization and applicability. While methods such as43 and48
demonstrate high performance with individual models, our hybrid approach—combining deep learning
with traditional texture-based features—delivers a more versatile and effective solution for diverse clinical
environments. The use of advanced preprocessing techniques, such as CLAHE, further enhances detection

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Classifiers Accuracy (%) Precision (%) Recall (%) Specificity (%) F1-score AUC
100 97 100 0.98 1.00
XGBoost 98.67
98 100 97 0.99 1.00
100 97 100 0.98 1.00
AdaBoost 98.67
98 100 97 0.99 1.00
100 90 100 0.95 1.00
CatBoost 96.00
94 100 90 0.97 1.00

Table 7. Results on rodrigues US dataset.

Fig. 16. CM and ROC corresponding to each ensemble classifier on rodrigues US dataset.

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Classifiers Accuracy (%) Precision (%) Recall (%) Specificity (%) F1-score AUC
98 96 98 0.97 0.99
XGBoost 97.02 94 97 98 0.95 0.99
98 100 99 0.99 1.00
93 94 91 0.94 0.98
AdaBoost 92.77 87 86 95 0.86 0.97
100 100 100 1.00 1.00
93 98 91 0.96 0.99
CatBoost 94.89 95 86 98 0.90 0.98
100 100 100 1.00 1.00

Table 8. Results on BUSI US dataset.

accuracy, especially in distinguishing malignant and benign cases across modalities. The integration of hybrid
feature fusion with ensemble classifiers allows our approach to achieve consistently high accuracy while
maintaining robustness, making it a promising candidate for real-world clinical applications.
Nevertheless, several limitations must be acknowledged. First, the proposed method is evaluated separately
on mammograms and ultrasounds datasets. Second, fixed hyperparameters are employed for classifiers, which
may not be optimal across all datasets; further fine-tuning could improve model performance. Third, while the
proposed method shows potential, its scalability and real-world applicability remain uncertain, as it has not yet
been tested on larger, more diverse datasets or in clinical environments. Although the model performed well
overall, it may misclassify images with poor quality, such as noisy or low-contrast images, and struggles with class
imbalance, particularly for less frequent classes like malignant tumors. Additionally, integrating multi-modal
data (mammograms and ultrasound) can lead to challenges like misalignment and image quality variations.

Conclusion and future work

This research presented a novel approach based on deep and traditional breast cancer detection features.
Combining features from both mammogram and ultrasound images enhanced detection accuracy and provided
a more robust system. Multi-modal datasets are used in this research paper i.e., Mammograms and ultrasound
images. Images are pre-processed, augmented, enhanced, and segmented using the aforementioned techniques.
Deep features are extracted using InceptionV3, ResNet50, and MobileNetV2. Meanwhile, the Gabor filter and
wavelet transform are the traditional extracted features. The top best-contributed features are selected using
statistical ANOVA-F value. The final feature vector is comprised of 600 features only including both traditional
and deep features. State-of-the art comparisons of the Ensemble classifiers, i.e., XGBoost, AdaBoost, and CatBoost
are performed. For MG images, the proposed approach achieved highest accuracy of 95.00% using Mini-DDSM
dataset on XGBoost and achieved 97.06% accuracy using INbreast dataset on XGBoost and CatBoost. Whereas
for US images, 98.67% highest accuracy was achieved by XGBoost and AdaBoost on the Rodrigues dataset
and for the BUSI dataset XGBoost gave the highest accuracy of 97.02%. The proposed framework outperforms
others, even with a small dataset, and shows potential for improving breast cancer detection in mammograms
and ultrasound images.
While the proposed hybrid feature fusion method demonstrates promising results, there are several
limitations to consider. First, the method was evaluated on datasets for mammograms and ultrasounds, and
future work should explore the integration of multi-modal data for a more comprehensive detection approach.
Second, hyperparameters are used for the classifiers, which may not be optimal for all datasets, and further
hyperparameter tuning is needed to improve model performance. Third, while the method shows potential, its
scalability and real-world applicability remain uncertain, as it has not yet been tested on larger, more diverse
datasets or in clinical environments.
To address these challenges, future work will focus on several enhancements to improve model performance
and adaptability. We plan to explore techniques to reduce model complexity and improve computational
efficiency, including model pruning, knowledge distillation, and the use of lightweight convolutional layers
like depthwise separable convolutions. Additionally, we aim to enhance the adaptability of our hybrid
model for resource-constrained hardware and real-time clinical applications. To address class imbalance
and improve performance under varying image quality conditions, we will investigate the development of a
custom loss function or specialized activation function. Future work will focus on addressing these issues with
noise reduction, data augmentation, and improved multi-modal fusion to enhance performance and reduce
misclassifications. We also plan to incorporate k-fold cross-validation and additional statistical analyses, such
as confidence intervals and p-values, to provide further validation of reliable model performance and ensure
a statistically significant assessment of the results. An ablation study will be conducted to assess the effects of
modifying activation functions, experimenting with AdamW as an alternative optimizer, and increasing the
number of convolutional layers to better understand model capacity and performance. We also plan to compare
our approach with traditional machine learning classifiers such as SVM, KNN, and RF to investigate differences
in feature representation and classification. Lastly, we will explore the Vision Transformer (ViT), a state-of-the-
art model that has set new benchmarks in image classification, as it may offer further improvements in breast
cancer detection.

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Fig. 17. CM and ROC corresponding to each ensemble classifier on BUSI US dataset.

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Fig. 18. Ensemble classifiers comparison with MG and US dataset images.

Fig. 19. Comparative analysis against MG and US datasets.

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Reference Year Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Precision (%) F1 Score
12 2019 82.02 – – – –
25 2019 94.55 95.60 95.36 – –
70 2020 85.71 87.30 84.00 85.70 –
71 2020 88.00 91.00 – 85.00
72 2020 90.91 82.96 97.38 – –
26 2021 88.00 – – – –
73 2021 88.70 84.10 93.00 91.70 –
53 2022 90.68 92.72 88.21 - –
22 2023 92.00 92.00 92.00 93.00 0.93
74 2023 82.35 – – – –
Proposed - XGBoost 2024 95.00 95.00 95.00 95.00 0.97
Proposed - AdaBoost 2024 86.67 86.66 93.33 87.66 0.86
Proposed - CatBoost 2024 93.33 93.33 96.33 93.33 0.93

Table 9. Performance evaluation in comparison to related work on Mini-DDSM dataset.

Existing Methods Year Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Precision (%) F1 Score
75 2017 86.00 – – – –
72 2020 87.93 57.20 97.33 – –
53 2022 91.28 99.43 83.13 – –
76 2023 92.26 86.21 92.95 91.22 0.88
74 2023 72.31 – – – –
27 2023 93.00 93.86 93.83 – 0.93
Proposed - XGBoost 2024 97.06 93.00 92.50 98.00 0.95
Proposed - AdaBoost 2024 94.12 85.50 85.50 96.50 0.89
Proposed - CatBoost 2024 97.06 93.00 92.50 98.00 0.95

Table 10. Performance evaluation in comparison to related work on INbreast dataset.

Existing Methods Year Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Precision (%) F1 Score
29 2019 92.00 – – – –
30 2019 94.40 94.00 95.00 96.57 0.96
31 2020 96.00 97.30 94.12 96.00 0.95
33 2021 97.20 97.35 96.97 98.00 –
54 2023 98.00 – 99.00 98.98 0.97
42 2024 97.50 97.00 98.00 97.97 0.97
Proposed - XGBoost 2024 98.67 98.5 98.5 99.00 0.98
Proposed - AdaBoost 2024 98.67 98.5 98.5 99.00 0.98
Proposed - CatBoost 2024 96.00 96.00 95.00 97.00 0.96

Table 11. Performance evaluation in comparison to related work on rodrigues dataset.

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Existing methods Year Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Precision (%) F1 Score
29 2019 78.00 – – – –
32 2020 94.62 92.31 95.60 90.00 0.91
34 2021 95.50 95.60 97.87 – 0.95
36 2021 91.50 – 89.70 – –
53 2022 89.34 93.14 85.26 – –
77 2023 85.23 97.63 89.73 – –
37 2023 87.80 87.40 90.00 80.80 0.87
54 2023 93.70 94.62 92.74 93.18 –
22 2023 96.00 96.00 96.00 96.00 0.92
42 2024 94.62 95.38 93.85 93.94 –
39 2024 94.37 95.19 92.55 96.59 0.95
Proposed - XGBoost 2024 97.02 97.66 98.33 96.66 0.97
Proposed - AdaBoost 2024 92.77 93.33 95.33 93.33 0.93
Proposed - CatBoost 2024 94.89 94.66 96.33 96.00 0.95

Table 12. Performance evaluation in comparison to related work on BUSI dataset.

Reference Feature extraction Classification

/ Year Datasets / Modality Dataset size Methodology techniques method Accuracy
BreastNet-SVM with
45 CBIS-DDSM 6165 masses, 6048 Calcification, YOLO for detection, CNN, Custom AlexNet
2024 optimizers (SGD, 99.16%
(Mammograms) 1273 (rchitectural Distortion ResUNet for segmentation (BreastNet-SVM)
Adam, RMSprop)
Mini-DDSM Ensemble Learning with TL (AlexNet, 98.13%
42 Mini-DDSM (600 images), BUSI LoG and modified high-
2024 (Mammogram), BUSI, AlexNet, ResNet18, ResNet18, (Malignancy on
(780 images), BUS2 (250 images) boosting
BUS2 (Ultrasound) MobileNetV2 MobileNetV2) BUS2)
2235 Mini-DDSM images (1832
Mini-DDSM Grayscale normalization,
78 benign, 403 malignant), 1348
2025 (Mammogram), BUSI DL with ResNet-18 cropping (YOLOv8), ResNet-18 CNN 93.78%
BUSI images (1139 benign, 209
(Ultrasound) Augmentation (flip)
malignant)
Binary classification
44 290 breast masses (188 benign,
2025 Breast Ultrasound Multimodal DL Swin Transformer V2 (benign vs 86%
102 malignant)
malignant)
Hybrid CNN, TL with
46 Histopathological (self- 5429 images (2234 benign, 590
2025 VGG16 PCA for feature VGG16, PCA, Custom CNN SVM, DT, KNN 99.5% (SVM)
collected) malignant)
reduction
BreakHis-400x Deep Neural Breast Cancer Densenet121 with CNN, Densenet121 TL,
47 BreakHis-400x (1820 images), 93.97% (B-400x),
2025 (Histopathological), Detection (DNBCD) Global Average Pooling, Softmax for BUSI,
BUSI (1578 images) 89.87% (BUSI)
BUSI (Ultrasound) with TL Grad-CAM Sigmoid for B-400x
98.8% (YOLOv3),
DDSM (2500 studies), INbreast Enhanced ML models ResNet50, Feature Pyramid 97.6%
43 DDSM, INbreast, AIIMS YOLOv3, RetinaNet,
2025 (1500 images), AIIMS ( 3000 (YOLOv3, RetinaNet, Network (FPN), Region (RetinaNet),
(Mammograms) Faster R-CNN
images) Faster R-CNN) Proposal Network (RPN) 96.2% (Faster
R-CNN)
CLAHE, Ensemble Deep 94% (overall),
48 Dunya Women’s Cancer
2025 4103 high-resolution images Hybrid ensemble model Random Vector Functional edRVFL 91.4% (benign),
Center (Ultrasound)
Link (edRVFL) 84% (malignant)
Hybrid feature fusion Mini-DDSM:
Our Mini-DDSM, INbreast with deep TL models 95%, INbreast:
Mini-DDSM (600 images), CLAHE, Wavelet Transform, XGBoost, AdaBoost,
Proposed (Mammogram) (ResNet50, InceptionV3, 97.06%,
INbreast (376 images), Rodrigues Gabor Filters, ResNet50, CatBoost (Ensemble
Study Rodrigues, BUSI MobileNetV2) and Rodrigues:
(250 images), BUSI (780 images) InceptionV3, MobileNetV2 learning classifiers)
(2025) (Ultrasound) traditional features (Gabor 98.67%, BUSI:
filters, Wavelet transforms) 97.02%

Table 13. Summary of current approaches for breast cancer detection using different datasets, models, and
techniques.

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Data availability
The datasets used and analyzed during this study are publicly available from the following sources: Mini-DDSM:
Available from Kaggle at [Link] INbreast: Available from ​K​a​g​
g​l​e at ​h​t​t​p​s​:​/​/​w​w​w​.​​k​a​gg​ ​l​e​​.​c​o​m​/​da​​ ​t​a​s​e​​t​s​/​r​a​m​​a​n​a​t​h​a​​n​s​p​2​0​/​​i​n​b​r​ea​ ​s​t​-​d​a​t​a​s​e​t. Rodrigues: Available from Mendeley
Data at [Link] BUSI: Available from Kaggle at ​h​t​t​ps​ ​:​​​/​​/​w​w​​w​.k​ ​a​g​
g​l​​e​.​c​​om
​ ​​/​d​a​t​a​s​​e​​t​s​/​a​​r​y​a​s​h​a​​h
​ ​2​k​/​b​​r​e​​as​ ​t​-​u​l​t​r​a​s​​o​u​n​d​-​i​m​​a​g​es​ ​-​d​a​t​a​s​e​t. A subset of 600 images from the Mini-DDSM
dataset was selected to approximately match the size of the ultrasound datasets. Additionally, the INbreast da-
taset was divided into two classes for evaluation purposes. The processed datasets are not publicly available but
can be provided by the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Received: 20 March 2025; Accepted: 26 September 2025

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Acknowledgements
The authors want to acknowledge the fund by Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Sup-
porting Project number (PNURSP2025R346). The authors would like also to acknowledge the support of AIDA
Lab CCIS Prince Sultan University, Riyadh Saudi Arabia for APC support.

Author contributions
All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
A.S. and S.F. conceptualized the study and designed the methodology. A.S., S.F., R.J. and S.I. conducted the
experiments and analyzed the results. S.F. supervised the research and contributed to manuscript refinement.
A.S., F.S.A, A.A. assisted in data preprocessing and feature extraction. S.F. and T.S. provided critical insights
on model evaluation and validation. A.S. and S.F. wrote the main manuscript text. All authors reviewed and
approved the final manuscript.

Funding
This research was funded by Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project
number (PNURSP2025R346), Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Declarations

Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information
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