# BrainAid: Efficient Brain Tumor Detection Using Lightweight CNNs and Explainable AI for Resource-Constrained Environments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.15077 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15077/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [SlowFast Networks for Video Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03982/) (2018)
- [Combining Noise-to-Image and Image-to-Image GANs: Brain MR Image Augmentation for Tumor Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13456/) (2019)
- [3D Semantic Segmentation of Brain Tumor for Overall Survival Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11576/) (2020)
- [Learning Global and Local Features of Normal Brain Anatomy for Unsupervised Abnormality Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12573/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A brain tumor is an unusual growth of cells in the brain that can be cancerous or not, affecting normal brain function and causing serious risk to health. Existing solutions for brain tumor classification, such as expert manual evaluations of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, are generally inconsistent as different professionals have different criteria and can be resource-intensive, leading to delayed diagnoses. Additionally, while deep learning models have demonstrated potential, they typically require significant computational resources, motivating the need for more efficient and accessible diagnostic tools that can be deployed in real-time healthcare settings. To address these limitations, this study presents BrainAid, which makes efficient use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Vision Transformers (ViTs) for effective classification of four-class classification of glioma, meningioma, pituitary tumor, and no-tumor MRI scans, outperforming all the standard models such as VGG16, Inception-V3, ResNet-50 and so, while integrating Explainable AI (XAI) to improve interpretability. The BrainAid is trained to classify tumors with a high precision of 98%, achieving an F1 score of 98% and an accuracy of 98% using publicly available dataset. The model is deployed on a Raspberry Pi, demonstrating efficiency in low-resource environments. This system shows the feasibility of real-time, edge-based tumor classification, providing quick diagnostic support for medical professionals and enhancing patient care in resource-limited healthcare facilities and underserved areas.