Automated MRI brain abnormality detection using U-Net and ReX-Net
摘要
Brain tumors represent some of the most critical neurological disorders, where early detection and precise classification are crucial for improving patient outcomes. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a crucial diagnostic modality for identifying and evaluating such tumors. However, the traditional manual interpretation of MRI scans is often time-consuming and prone to inconsistency. To address these challenges, this study proposes an automated framework for MRI-based brain tumor segmentation and classification using U-Net and ReXNet-150 models. The U-Net architecture is utilized to accurately delineate tumor regions, while ReXNet-150 classifies the segmented regions into meningioma, glioma, or no tumor categories. The proposed end-to-end system achieved robust and statistically validated performance, with 96.7% accuracy, precision of 0.952, recall of 0.948, and an F1-score of 0.950, supported by 95% confidence intervals obtained through patient-wise cross-validation. Additionally, the oracle (ground-truth ROI) evaluation achieved 99.3% accuracy, representing the theoretical upper bound of classifier performance. These findings demonstrate that the integrated U-Net → ReXNet-150 pipeline provides a reliable and computationally efficient solution for real-world clinical applications, with a specific focus on meningioma and glioma detection, thereby maintaining anatomical consistency and modeling precision.