Browsing by Author "Du Preez, Tiana"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The use of bayesian neural networks in thyroid cancer classification
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Du Preez, Tiana; Bierman, Surette; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Dept. of Statistics and Actuarial Science.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY: Artificial Neural Networks form a class of machine learning models that can be used to model complex relationships between variables. They are used in an innumerable number of practical applications toward solving real-world problems. However, one of the limitations of conventional neural networks is that they are not designed to accurately quantify uncertainty in network predictions. A possible solution to this problem is the use of Bayesian inference to introduce stochasticity in neural networks. For example, Bayesian neural networks assign a prior distribution to the neural network weight parameters. The posterior distribution is then derived by means of variational inference algorithms. Bayesian neural networks are currently successfully used in a wide variety of applications. Since they are particularly useful in settings where quantification of uncertainty in prediction is important, a key application area for Bayesian neural networks is the medical field. We investigate the use of Bayesian Neural Networks in thyroid cancer classification. Thyroid cancer diagnosis is a difficult task. Therefore, developing models yielding predictions of cancer stages, with accurate associated risks, can be a worthwhile contribution. In our empirical work, we thus focus on the classification of thyroid cancer by means of Bayesian neural networks. More specifically, since we use data that consist of ultrasound images, we fit Bayesian Convolutional Neural Networks for image classification. Modified versions of the LeNet-5, AlexNet and GoogLeNet network architectures are considered. Most of the different architectures, adapted for Bayesian inference, are found to perform slightly better than the corresponding conventional network architectures. In addition, Bayesian aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties are reported for each model. This uncertainty quantification may be considered a sensible contribution.