Integrating AI for Human-Centric Breast Cancer Diagnostics: A Multi-Scale and Multi-View Swin Transformer Framework

Abstract

Despite advancements in Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems, breast cancer remains one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. Recent breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have shown significant promise in development of advanced Deep Learning (DL) architectures for breast cancer diagnosis through mammography. In this context, the paper focuses on the integration of AI within a Human-Centric workflow to enhance breast cancer diagnostics. Key challenges are, however, largely overlooked such as reliance on detailed tumor annotations and susceptibility to missing views, particularly during test time. To address these issues, we propose a hybrid, multi-scale and multi-view Swin Transformer-based framework (MSMV-Swin) that enhances diagnostic robustness and accuracy. The proposed MSMV-Swin framework is designed to work as a decision-support tool, helping radiologists analyze multi-view mammograms more effectively. More specifically, the MSMV-Swin framework leverages the Segment Anything Model (SAM) to isolate the breast lobe, reducing background noise and enabling comprehensive feature extraction. The multi-scale nature of the proposed MSMV-Swin framework accounts for tumor-specific regions as well as the spatial characteristics of tissues surrounding the tumor, capturing both localized and contextual information. The integration of contextual and localized data ensures that MSMV-Swin's outputs align with the way radiologists interpret mammograms, fostering better human-AI interaction and trust. A hybrid fusion structure is then designed to ensure robustness against missing views, a common occurrence in clinical practice when only a single mammogram view is available.