Attention Enhanced InceptionNeXt-Based Hybrid Deep Learning Model for Lung Cancer Detection

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related mortality globally. Early diagnosis of this highly fatal and prevalent disease can significantly improve survival rates and prevent its progression. Computed tomography (CT) is the gold standard imaging modality for lung cancer diagnosis, offering critical insights into the assessment of lung nodules. We present a hybrid deep learning model that integrates Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) with Vision Transformers (ViTs). By optimizing and integrating grid and block attention mechanisms with InceptionNeXt blocks, the proposed model effectively captures both fine-grained and large-scale features in CT images. This comprehensive approach enables the model not only to differentiate between malignant and benign nodules but also to identify specific cancer subtypes such as adenocarcinoma, large cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma. The use of InceptionNeXt blocks facilitates multi-scale feature processing, making the model particularly effective for complex and diverse lung nodule patterns. Similarly, including grid attention improves the model’s capacity to identify spatial relationships across different sections of the picture, whereas block attention focuses on capturing hierarchical and contextual information, allowing for precise identification and categorization of lung nodules. To ensure robustness and generalizability, the model was trained and validated using two public datasets, Chest CT and IQ-OTH/NCCD, employing transfer learning and pre-processing techniques to improve detection accuracy. The proposed model achieved an impressive accuracy of 99.54% on the IQ-OTH/NCCD dataset and 98.41% on the Chest CT dataset, outperforming state-of-the-art CNN-based and ViT-based methods. With only 18.1 million parameters, the model provides a lightweight yet powerful solution for early lung cancer detection, potentially improving clinical outcomes and increasing patient survival rates.