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Open Access

ARTICLE

Advancing Breast Cancer Molecular Subtyping: A Comparative Study of Convolutional Neural Networks and Vision Transformers on Mammograms

Chee Chin Lim1,2,*, Hui Wen Tiu1, Qi Wei Oung1,3, Chiew Chea Lau4, Xiao Jian Tan2,5
1 Faculty of Electronic Engineering & Technology (FKTEN), Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Arau, 02600, Perlis, Malaysia
2 Sport Engineering Research Centre (SERC), Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Arau, 02600, Perlis, Malaysia
3 Centre of Excellence for Advanced Communication Engineering (ACE), Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Arau, 02600, Perlis, Malaysia
4 School of Medical Sciences, Health Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kubang Kerian, 16150, Kelantan, Malaysia
5 Biomedical and Bioinformatics Engineering (BBE) Research Group, Centre for Multimodal Signal Processing (CMSP), Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology (TAR UMT), Jalan Genting Kelang, Setapak, Kuala Lumpur, 53300, Malaysia
* Corresponding Author: Chee Chin Lim. Email: email

Computers, Materials & Continua https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2025.070468

Received 16 July 2025; Accepted 28 October 2025; Published online 19 December 2025

Abstract

Breast cancer remains one of the leading causes of cancer mortality world-wide, with accurate molecular subtyping is critical for guiding treatment and improving patient outcomes. Traditional molecular subtyping via immuno-histochemistry (IHC) test is invasive, time-consuming, and may not fully represent tumor heterogeneity. This study proposes a non-invasive approach using digital mammography images and deep learning algorithm for classifying breast cancer molecular subtypes. Four pretrained models, including two Convolutional Neural Networks (MobileNet_V3_Large and VGG-16) and two Vision Transformers (ViT_B_16 and ViT_Base_Patch16_Clip_224) were fine-tuned to classify images into HER2-enriched, Luminal, Normal-like, and Triple Negative subtypes. Hyperparameter tuning, including learning rate adjustment and layer freezing strategies, was applied to optimize performance. Among the evaluated models, ViT_Base_Patch16_Clip_224 achieved the highest test accuracy (94.44%), with equally high precision, recall, and F1-score of 0.94, demonstrating excellent generalization. MobileNet_V3_Large achieved the same accuracy but showed less training stability. In contrast, VGG-16 recorded the lowest performance, indicating a limitation in its generalizability for this classification task. The study also highlighted the superior performance of the Vision Transformer models over CNNs, particularly due to their ability to capture global contextual features and the benefit of CLIP-based pretraining in ViT_Base_Patch16_Clip_224. To enhance clinical applicability, a graphical user interface (GUI) named “BCMS Dx” was developed for streamlined subtype prediction. Deep learning applied to mammography has proven effective for accurate and non-invasive molecular subtyping. The proposed Vision Transformer-based model and supporting GUI offer a promising direction for augmenting diagnostic workflows, minimizing the need for invasive procedures, and advancing personalized breast cancer management.

Keywords

Artificial intelligence; breast cancer; classification; convolutional neural network; deep learning; hyperparameter tuning; mammography; medical imaging; molecular subtypes; vision transformer

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