Classification of human brain tumours from MRS data using Discrete Wavelet Transform and Bayesian Neural Networks

The diagnosis of brain tumours is an extremely sensitive and complex clinical task that must rely upon information gathered through non-invasive techniques. One such technique is Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. In this task, radiology experts are likely to benefit from the support of computer-based systems built around robust classification processes. In this paper, a Discrete Wavelet Transform procedure was applied to the pre-processing of spectra corresponding to several brain tumour pathologies. This procedure does not alleviate the high dimensionality of the data by itself. For this reason, dimensionality reduction was subsequently implemented using Moving Window with Variance Analysis for feature selection or Principal Component Analysis for feature extraction. The combined method yielded very encouraging results in terms of diagnostic discriminatory binary classification using Bayesian Neural Networks. In most cases, the classification accuracy improved on previously reported results.

► The complex task of brain tumour diagnosis must rely upon non-invasive measurements. ► Expert diagnosis can benefit from computer-based decision support. ► The diagnosis of brain tumours on the basis of MRS is a signal processing problem. ► Discrete Wavelet Transform and Dimensionality Reduction are used to preprocess MRS. ► These methods yield excellent classification results using Bayesian Neural Networks.