Multi-Class Brain Tumor Classification Using Advanced Deep Learning Models: A Comparative Study
Accurate classification of multiple brain tumor types—particularly meningiomas, which exhibit subtle imaging features—remains challenging in MRI. This study systematically evaluates the performance of five convolutional neural network architectures, including a custom model and established networks (VGG16, VGG19, DenseNet121, and EfficientNetB0), on approximately 10,000 clinical MRI images within a unified experimental framework. Employing consistent transfer learning and fine-tuning strategies, the findings indicate that architectural efficiency outweighs model depth in determining performance. EfficientNetB0 achieves a markedly superior overall accuracy of 95% and, notably, elevates the recall for meningiomas from approximately 20% to 89% on large-scale clinical data—a substantial improvement that underscores its significant clinical utility.