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Research Article |

Nanophotonic-Enhanced Photoacoustic Fusion with Transformers for Brain Tumor Classification

Author(s): Balamanikandan A1*, Manikandan N2, Sriananda Ganesh T3, Kalidasan M4, Sukanya M5, and Anbarasu L6

Published In : International Journal of Electrical and Electronics Research (IJEER)        Volume 13, Issue 4

Publisher : FOREX Publication

Published : 30 December 2025

e-ISSN : 2347-470X

Page(s) : 870-877

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37391/IJEER.130427

Abstract

This research presents a novel diagnostic framework that integrates nanophotonic-enhanced photoacoustic imaging (PAI) with multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), and positron emission tomography (PET). A lightweight convolutional encoder extracts low-level features, which are fused via a transformer-based architecture employing 3D patch embeddings and multi-head self-attention. Intermediate fusion balances modality-specific and joint representations, achieving an overall accuracy of 97.8%, sensitivity of 96.5%, and specificity of 98.1% on a cohort of 550 complete MRI–CT–PET cases augmented with 100 simulated PAI volumes. Explainable AI techniques—Grad-CAM for spatial heatmaps and Deep SHAP for voxel-level attribution provide clinicians with transparent visualizations and a Pointing Game score of 92% alignment with expert annotations. Inference time of 1.2s per case and robustness to Gaussian (σ = 0.05) and Rician (SNR = 20dB) noise demonstrate clinical viability. Future work will extend domain adaptation to pilot real PAI acquisitions and optimize deployment on standard hospital GPUs.

Keywords: Nanophotonic, Photoacoustic Imaging, Multimodal Imaging, Transformer Models, Explainable AI (XAI).




Balamanikandan A*, Electronics and Communication Engineering, Mohan Babu University (Erstwhile SreeVidyanikethan Engineering College), Tirupati, India; Email: balamanieee83@gmail.com

Manikandan N, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SSM Institute of Engineering and Technology, Dindigul, India; Email: manikandaneee@ssmiet.ac.in

Sriananda Ganesh T, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, St. Joseph's College of Engineering, Chennai, India; Email: srianandceg19@gmail.com

Kalidasan M, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, SSM Institute of Engineering and Technology, Dindigul, India; Email: kalidasaneee@ssmiet.ac.in

Sukanya M, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Adhiyamaan College of Engineering, Hosur, India; Email: sukanyavisagan@gmail.com

Anbarasu L, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Erode Sengunthar Engineering College, Erode, India; Email: lanbarasu78@gmail.com

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Balamanikandan A, Manikandan N, Sriananda Ganesh T, Kalidasan M, Sukanya M, Anbarasu L (2025), Nanophotonic-Enhanced Photoacoustic Fusion with Transformers for Brain Tumor Classification. IJEER 13(4), 870-877. DOI: 10.37391/IJEER.130427.