# Dual-path convolutional neural network using micro-FTIR imaging to predict breast cancer subtypes and biomarkers levels: estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, HER2 and Ki67

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.15099 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.15099/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 64 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [Delving Deep into Rectifiers: Surpassing Human-Level Performance on ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01852/) (2015)
- [Network In Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.4400/) (2013)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks: An Overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07035/) (2017)
- [Machine learning in spectral domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14436/) (2020)
- [Generative Adversarial Network for Medical Images (MI-GAN)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00551/) (2018)
- [Understanding CNN Fragility When Learning With Imbalanced Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09465/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Breast cancer molecular subtypes classification plays an import role to sort patients with divergent prognosis. The biomarkers used are Estrogen Receptor (ER), Progesterone Receptor (PR), HER2, and Ki67. Based on these biomarkers expression levels, subtypes are classified as Luminal A (LA), Luminal B (LB), HER2 subtype, and Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC). Immunohistochemistry is used to classify subtypes, although interlaboratory and interobserver variations can affect its accuracy, besides being a time-consuming technique. The Fourier transform infrared micro-spectroscopy may be coupled with deep learning for cancer evaluation, where there is still a lack of studies for subtypes and biomarker levels prediction. This study presents a novel 2D deep learning approach to achieve these predictions. Sixty micro-FTIR images of 320x320 pixels were collected from a human breast biopsies microarray. Data were clustered by K-means, preprocessed and 32x32 patches were generated using a fully automated approach. CaReNet-V2, a novel convolutional neural network, was developed to classify breast cancer (CA) vs adjacent tissue (AT) and molecular subtypes, and to predict biomarkers level. The clustering method enabled to remove non-tissue pixels. Test accuracies for CA vs AT and subtype were above 0.84. The model enabled the prediction of ER, PR, and HER2 levels, where borderline values showed lower performance (minimum accuracy of 0.54). Ki67 percentage regression demonstrated a mean error of 3.6%. Thus, CaReNet-V2 is a potential technique for breast cancer biopsies evaluation, standing out as a screening analysis technique and helping to prioritize patients.