Deep-AutoMO: Deep automated multiobjective neural network for trustworthy lesion malignancy diagnosis in the early stage via digital breast tomosynthesis.

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women, and early diagnosis of malignant lesions is crucial for developing treatment plans. Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) has emerged as a valuable tool for early breast cancer detection, as it can identify more lesions and improve the early detection rate. Deep learning has shown great potential in medical image-based cancer diagnosis, including DBT. However, deploying these models in clinical practice may be challenging due to concerns about reliability and robustness. In this study, we developed a novel deep automated multiobjective neural network (Deep-AutoMO) to build a trustworthy model and achieve balance, safety and robustness in a unified way. During the training stage, we introduced a multiobjective immune neural architecture search (MINAS) that simultaneously considers sensitivity and specificity as objective functions, aiming to strike a balance between the two. Each neural network in Deep-AutoMO comprises a combination of a ResNet block, a DenseNet block and a pooling layer. We employ Bayesian optimization to optimize the hyperparameters in the MINAS, enhancing the efficiency of the model training process. In the testing stage, evidential reasoning based on entropy (ERE) approach is proposed to build a safe and robust model. The experimental study on DBT images demonstrated that Deep-AutoMO achieves promising performance with a well-balanced trade-off between sensitivity and specificity, outperforming currently available methods. Moreover, the model's safety is ensured through uncertainty estimation, and its robustness is improved, making it a trustworthy tool for breast cancer diagnosis in clinical settings. We have shared the code on GitHub for other researchers to use. The code can be found at https://github.com/ChaoyangZhang-XJTU/Deep-AutoMO.