Independent evaluation of machine learning and deep learning models for breast cancer detection

Deepthi, Ashalatha Nayak and Rani Oomman Panicker

PLOS Digital Health, 2026, vol. 5, issue 9, 1-23

Abstract: Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality worldwide, and despite advances in clinical diagnosis, challenges such as inconclusive imaging results and inter-observer variability highlight the need for complementary computational approaches to support early and accurate detection. In this study, we provide an overview of several machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) algorithms used for breast cancer detection with structured clinical data and imaging data. We applied ML models to structured clinical data which included Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset, CSAW-CC dataset and SEER database using Random Forest, Decision Tree, Logistic Regression, Gradient Boosting, and Bayesian classifier models. DL models, specifically Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), ResNet50, VGG16, and DenseNet, were utilized in mammography, histopathology, and ultrasound datasets. The experimental results show that the DL models outperformed ML models in image classification tasks, obtaining accuracy rates of 97.88% for histopathological images and 92.00% for ultrasound data. However, ensemble-based and probabilistic ML models achieved strong performance on structured clinical data, with predictive accuracy of up to 98%. All performance metrics are reported with 95% confidence intervals.Model calibration was assessed using the Expected Calibration Error (ECE) and reliability diagrams. Logistic Regression, Gradient Boosting, and Random Forest produced the best-calibrated probability estimates among the structured-data classifiers, while the transfer-learning-based deep convolutional architectures were well calibrated on the histopathology imaging datasets. Calibration was comparatively weaker for Decision Tree and Naive Bayes among the structured-data classifiers, as well as for the from-scratch CNN baseline and some deep learning models evaluated on the smaller BUSI dataset. The results indicate that model performance is significantly influenced by data modality and that artificial intelligence may serve as a valuable computational tool to support clinical breast cancer diagnosis workflow. Further prospective validation using clinical data across diverse patient populations will be essential to confirm the robustness, interpretability, and generalizability of these findings.Author summary: Breast cancer is one of the major contributors to cancer deaths in the world, and early diagnosis has a critical role in improving the survival rate of the patients. This study evaluates the effectiveness of artificial intelligence method across different types of medical data used in breast cancer diagnosis. We used standard machine learning models in structured clinical data and deep learning models in medical images such as histopathology slides, ultrasound scans and mammograms from publicly-available repositories. All datasets underwent standardized preprocessing, model training and evaluation using standard performance measures. We find that no particular approach outperforms others when working with all types of data: conventional machine learning was more successful in the classification of tabular clinical data, but deep learning models were more accurate in the classification of imaging data. These results show that the best choice of models is determined by the characteristics of the data and not only by the complexity of the models. This study supports the potential of artificial intelligence as an assistive tool for breast cancer diagnosis but emphasizes the need for further validation in clinical settings.

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pdig00:0001747

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pdig.0001747

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