Advancing Brain Tumor Classification through Fine-Tuned Vision Transformers: A Comparative Study of Pre-Trained Models

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the classification of brain tumor images using five pre-trained vision transformer (ViT) models, namely R50-ViT-l16, ViT-l16, ViT-l32, ViT-b16, and ViT-b32, employing a fine-tuning approach. The objective of this study is to advance the state-of-the-art in brain tumor classification by harnessing the power of these advanced models. The dataset utilized for experimentation consists of a total of 4855 images in the training set and 857 images in the testing set, encompassing four distinct tumor classes. The performance evaluation of each model is conducted through an extensive analysis encompassing precision, recall, F1-score, accuracy, and confusion matrix metrics. Among the models assessed, ViT-b32 demonstrates exceptional performance, achieving a high accuracy of 98.24% in accurately classifying brain tumor images. Notably, the obtained results outperform existing methodologies, showcasing the efficacy of the proposed approach. The contributions of this research extend beyond conventional methods, as it not only employs cutting-edge ViT models but also surpasses the performance of existing approaches for brain tumor image classification. This study not only demonstrates the potential of ViT models in medical image analysis but also provides a benchmark for future research in the field of brain tumor classification.