Robust Brain Tumour Classification: Comparative Deep Learning Analysis with Ensemble Modelling

¹ Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology, Dept. of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, Pune, India
² Vishwakarama Institute of Technology, Dept. of Computer Engineering, Pune, India

^* Corresponding author: disha.wankhede@viit.ac.in

Published online: 18 June 2025

Abstract

Accurate detection of brain tumours from MRI scans is essential for early diagnosis and treatment. Traditional approaches, including manual analysis by radiologists and classical machine learning methods relying on handcrafted features, often lack consistency and high accuracy. This study explores VGG16, VGG19, DenseNet121, ResNet50, Ensemble model (VGG16 + DenseNet121), MobileNetV2, and NASNet for automated brain tumour detection. Using the Brain Tumour Classification (MRI) dataset, VGG16 and DenseNet121 achieved the highest accuracy of 94.08%, demonstrating the effectiveness of transfer learning. An ensemble model was also used combing the 2 best models VGG16 and Densenet121 to create a better generalized model with ROC-AUC value of 0.9960. The findings emphasize CNNs' potential in enhancing the efficiency and precision of brain tumour diagnosis.