Kudo's Classification for Colon Polyps Assessment Using a Deep Learning Approach

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer death in the world. This disease could begin as a non-cancerous polyp in the colon, when not treated in a timely manner, these polyps could induce cancer, and in turn, death. We propose a deep learning model for classifying colon polyps based on the Kudo's classification schema, using basic colonoscopy equipment. We train a deep convolutional model with a private dataset from the University of Deusto with and without using a VGG model as a feature extractor, and compared the results. We obtained 83% of accuracy and 83% of F1-score after fine tuning our model with the VGG filter. These results show that deep learning algorithms are useful to develop computer-aided tools for early CRC detection, and suggest combining it with a polyp segmentation model for its use by specialists.