Deep Learning-Based Cancer Diagnosis Using a Bluefin Trevally-Optimized Convolutional Neural Network
Received: 22 January 2026 | Revised: 7 February 2026 and 18 February 2026 | Accepted: 19 February 2026 | Online: 9 March 2026
Corresponding author: Awwab Mohammad
Abstract
Accurate and automated detection of brain tumors from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans is critical for effective clinical diagnosis and treatment planning. This paper proposes a Bluefin Trevally Optimization-based Deep Learning (BTO-DL) framework for robust brain tumor detection and analysis from MRI images. The proposed approach integrates a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)–based feature extraction with a bio-inspired Bluefin Trevally Optimization (BTO) algorithm to jointly optimize network hyperparameters and feature importance weights, thereby enhancing convergence stability and generalization performance. The framework was tested on several publicly available benchmark brain MRI datasets, such as BraTS, Figshare, and Kaggle. It was trained over 50 epochs and used a patient-independent data split, demonstrating superior classification accuracy, spatial overlap, and convergence stability compared to existing methods. On the BraTS dataset, it achieves a classification accuracy of over 98%, Receiver Operating Characteristic–Area Under the Curve (ROC–AUC) values close to 0.99, and a Dice coefficient of 0.91. The model also shows stable training convergence, strong cross-dataset generalization, and low inference latency of about 18.6 ms per MRI slice indicating suitability for real-time clinical applications. A statistical significance test shows that the observed performance improvements are statistically significant (p < 0.01). The proposed BTO-DL framework offers a precise, efficient, and resilient solution for the automated detection and localization of brain tumors from MRI scans.
Keywords:
brain tumor detection, MRI, deep learning, Bluefin Trevally Optimization (BTO), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Dice coefficientDownloads
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Copyright (c) 2026 A. Kaliappan, Subhasini Shukla, Rahul Nandkumar Khadke, Ganesh B. Dongre, Robin George, Nitesh N. Nikam, R. D. Prathibha, M. R. Amruthalakshmi, B. Aruna, R. Madhumathi, Awwab Mohammad

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