Classification Approach for Breast Cancer Detection Using Back Propagation Neural Network

Abstract

According to the recent surveys, breast cancer has become one of the major causes of mortality rate among women. Breast cancer can be defined as a group of rapidly growing cells that lead to the formation of a lump or an extra mass in the breast tissue which consequently leads to the formation of tumor. Tumors can be classified as malignant (cancerous) or benign (non-cancerous). Feature selection is an important parameter in determining the classification systems. Machine learning methods are the most commonly used methods among researchers for breast cancer diagnosis. This paper proposes to investigate the WBCD (Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset) which comprises of 683 patients and implements the chosen features to train the back propagation neural network. The performance is then analyzed on the basis of classification accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictor values, receiver operating characteristic curves and confusion matrix. A total of 9 features has been used to classify breast cancer with an accuracy of 99.27%. According to the recent surveys, breast cancer has become one of the major causes of mortality rate among women. Breast cancer can be defined as a group of rapidly growing cells that lead to the formation of a lump or an extra mass in the breast tissue which consequently leads to the formation of tumor. Tumors can be classified as malignant (cancerous) or benign (non-cancerous). Feature selection is an important parameter in determining the classification systems. Machine learning methods are the most commonly used methods among researchers for breast cancer diagnosis. This paper proposes to investigate the WBCD (Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset) which comprises of 683 patients and implements the chosen features to train the back propagation neural network. The performance is then analyzed on the basis of classification accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictor values, receiver operating characteristic curves and confusion matrix. A total of 9 features has been used to classify breast cancer with an accuracy of 99.27%.