BUCAN: Bayesian Uncertainty-aware Classification with Attention Networks for Medical Images

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Abstract

Accurate and reliable medical image classification is critical for clinical decision-making across diverse imaging modalities, including X-ray, CT, and MRI. Traditional convolutional neural networks often produce overconfident predictions, limiting their clinical trustworthiness. In this work, we propose an uncertainty-aware, attention-augmented neural network that integrates multi-scale SwirlAttention and FeedBackAttention modules with a Bayesian probabilistic classifier. This framework enables robust feature extraction, interpretable attention maps, and principled estimation of epistemic uncertainty. We evaluate our approach on four diverse datasets, including Diabetic Retinopathy, Kvasir, Skin Cancer, and fused multi-focal Oocyte images, covering a wide range of pathological and morphological variations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art CNN and transformer-based baselines in terms of accuracy, calibration, and interpretability. Grad-CAM visualizations highlight clinically relevant regions, while uncertainty estimates provide actionable insights for ambiguous cases, making the framework suitable for reliable deployment in real-world clinical settings.

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