A hierarchical pipeline for breast boundary segmentation and calcification detection in mammograms

Recent advancements in machine learning and deep learning-based breast cancer detection using mammograms

OBJECTIVE

Mammogram-based automatic breast cancer detection has a primary role in accurate cancer diagnosis and treatment planning to save valuable lives. Mammography is one basic yet efficient test for screening breast cancer. Very few comprehensive surveys have been presented to briefly analyze methods for detecting breast cancer with mammograms. In this article, our objective is to give an overview of recent advancements in machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL)-based breast cancer detection systems.

METHODS

We give a structured framework to categorize mammogram-based breast cancer detection techniques. Several publicly available mammogram databases and different performance measures are also mentioned.

RESULTS

After deliberate investigation, we find most of the works classify breast tumors either as normal-abnormal or malignant-benign rather than classifying them into three classes. Furthermore, DL-based features are more significant than hand-crafted features. However, transfer learning is preferred over others as it yields better performance in small datasets, unlike classical DL techniques.

SIGNIFICANCE AND CONCLUSION

In this article, we have made an attempt to give recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI)-based breast cancer detection systems. Furthermore, a number of challenging issues and possible research directions are mentioned, which will help researchers in further scopes of research in this field.

Image Augmentation based on Variational Autoencoder for Breast Tumor Segmentation

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES

Breast tumor segmentation based on Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging is significant step for computable radiomics analysis of breast cancer. Manual tumor annotation is time-consuming process and involves medical acquaintance, biased, inclined to error, and inter-user discrepancy. A number of modern trainings have revealed the capability of deep learning representations in image segmentation.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Here, we describe a 3D Connected-UNets for tumor segmentation from 3D Magnetic Resonance Imagings based on encoder-decoder architecture. Due to a restricted training dataset size, a variational auto-encoder outlet is supplementary to renovate the input image itself in order to identify the shared decoder and execute additional controls on its layers. Based on initial segmentation of Connected-UNets, fully connected 3D provisional unsystematic domain is used to enhance segmentation outcomes by discovering 2D neighbor areas and 3D volume statistics. Moreover, 3D connected modules evaluation is used to endure around large modules and decrease segmentation noise.

RESULTS

The proposed method has been assessed on two widely offered datasets, explicitly INbreast and the curated breast imaging subset of digital database for screening mammography The proposed model has also been estimated using a private dataset.

CONCLUSION

The experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for breast tumor segmentation.

The application of traditional machine learning and deep learning techniques in mammography: a review

Breast cancer, the most prevalent malignant tumor among women, poses a significant threat to patients' physical and mental well-being. Recent advances in early screening technology have facilitated the early detection of an increasing number of breast cancers, resulting in a substantial improvement in patients' overall survival rates. The primary techniques used for early breast cancer diagnosis include mammography, breast ultrasound, breast MRI, and pathological examination. However, the clinical interpretation and analysis of the images produced by these technologies often involve significant labor costs and rely heavily on the expertise of clinicians, leading to inherent deviations. Consequently, artificial intelligence(AI) has emerged as a valuable technology in breast cancer diagnosis. Artificial intelligence includes Machine Learning(ML) and Deep Learning(DL). By simulating human behavior to learn from and process data, ML and DL aid in lesion localization reduce misdiagnosis rates, and improve accuracy. This narrative review provides a comprehensive review of the current research status of mammography using traditional ML and DL algorithms. It particularly highlights the latest advancements in DL methods for mammogram image analysis and offers insights into future development directions.

Automatic Calcification Morphology and Distribution Classification for Breast Mammograms With Multi-Task Graph Convolutional Neural Network

The morphology and distribution of microcalcifications are the most important descriptors for radiologists to diagnose breast cancer based on mammograms. However, it is very challenging and time-consuming for radiologists to characterize these descriptors manually, and there also lacks of effective and automatic solutions for this problem. We observed that the distribution and morphology descriptors are determined by the radiologists based on the spatial and visual relationships among calcifications. Thus, we hypothesize that this information can be effectively modelled by learning a relationship-aware representation using graph convolutional networks (GCNs). In this study, we propose a multi-task deep GCN method for automatic characterization of both the morphology and distribution of microcalcifications in mammograms. Our proposed method transforms morphology and distribution characterization into node and graph classification problem and learns the representations concurrently. We trained and validated the proposed method in an in-house dataset and public DDSM dataset with 195 and 583 cases,respectively. The proposed method reaches good and stable results with distribution AUC at 0.812 ± 0.043 and 0.873 ± 0.019, morphology AUC at 0.663 ± 0.016 and 0.700 ± 0.044 for both in-house and public datasets. In both datasets, our proposed method demonstrates statistically significant improvements compared to the baseline models. The performance improvements brought by our proposed multi-task mechanism can be attributed to the association between the distribution and morphology of calcifications in mammograms, which is interpretable using graphical visualizations and consistent with the definitions of descriptors in the standard BI-RADS guideline. In short, we explore, for the first time, the application of GCNs in microcalcification characterization that suggests the potential of using graph learning for more robust understanding of medical images.

Ensemble Learning-Based Hybrid Segmentation of Mammographic Images for Breast Cancer Risk Prediction Using Fuzzy C-Means and CNN Model

The research interest in this field is that females are not aware of their health conditions until they develop tumour, especially when breast cancer is concerned. The breast cancer risk factors include genetics, heredity, and sedentary lifestyle. The prime concern for the mortality rate among females is breast cancer, and breast cancer is on the rise, both in rural and urban India. Women aged 45 or above are more vulnerable to this disease. Images are more effective at depicting information as compared to text. With the advancement in technology, several computerized techniques have come up to extract hidden information from the images. The processed images have found their application in several sectors and medical science is one of them. Disease-like breast cancer affects most women universally and it happens due to the existence of breast masses in the breast region for the development of breast cancer in women. Timely breast cancer detection can also increase the rate of effective treatment and the survival of women suffering from breast cancer. This work elaborates the method of performing hybrid segmentation techniques using CLAHE, morphological operations on mammogram images, and classified images using deep learning. Images from the MIAS database have been used to obtain readings for parameters: threshold, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity rate, biopsy rate, or a combination of all the parameters and many others under study.

Connected-SegNets: A Deep Learning Model for Breast Tumor Segmentation from X-ray Images

Inspired by Connected-UNets, this study proposes a deep learning model, called Connected-SegNets, for breast tumor segmentation from X-ray images. In the proposed model, two SegNet architectures are connected with skip connections between their layers. Moreover, the cross-entropy loss function of the original SegNet has been replaced by the intersection over union (IoU) loss function in order to make the proposed model more robust against noise during the training process. As part of data preprocessing, a histogram equalization technique, called contrast limit adapt histogram equalization (CLAHE), is applied to all datasets to enhance the compressed regions and smooth the distribution of the pixels. Additionally, two image augmentation methods, namely rotation and flipping, are used to increase the amount of training data and to prevent overfitting. The proposed model has been evaluated on two publicly available datasets, specifically INbreast and the curated breast imaging subset of digital database for screening mammography (CBIS-DDSM). The proposed model has also been evaluated using a private dataset obtained from Cheng Hsin General Hospital in Taiwan. The experimental results show that the proposed Connected-SegNets model outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of Dice score and IoU score. The proposed Connected-SegNets produces a maximum Dice score of 96.34% on the INbreast dataset, 92.86% on the CBIS-DDSM dataset, and 92.25% on the private dataset. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the proposed model achieves the highest IoU score of 91.21%, 87.34%, and 83.71% on INbreast, CBIS-DDSM, and the private dataset, respectively.

Computerized Analysis of Mammogram Images for Early Detection of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is widespread worldwide and can be cured if diagnosed early. Using digital mammogram images and image processing with artificial intelligence can play an essential role in breast cancer diagnosis. As many computerized algorithms for breast cancer diagnosis have significant limitations, such as noise handling and varying or low contrast in the images, it can be difficult to segment the abnormal region. These challenges could be overcome by proposing a new pre-processing model, exploring its impact on the post-processing module, and testing it on an extensive database. In this research work, the three-step method is proposed and validated on large databases of mammography images. The first step corresponded to the database classification, followed by the second step, which removed the pectoral muscle from the mammogram image. The third stage utilized new image-enhancement techniques and a new segmentation module to detect abnormal regions in a well-enhanced image to diagnose breast cancer. The pre-and post-processing modules are based on novel image processing techniques. The proposed method was tested using data collected from different hospitals in the Qassim Health Cluster, Qassim Province, Saudi Arabia. This database contained the five categories in the Breast Imaging and Reporting and Data System and consisted of 2892 images; the proposed method is analyzed using the publicly available Mammographic Image Analysis Society database, which contained 322 images. The proposed method gives good contrast enhancement with peak-signal to noise ratio improvement of 3 dB. The proposed method provides an accuracy of approximately 92% on 2892 images of Qassim Health Cluster, Qassim Province, Saudi Arabia. The proposed method gives approximately 97% on the Mammographic Image Analysis Society database. The novelty of the proposed work is that it could work on all Breast Imaging and Reporting and Data System categories. The performance of the proposed method demonstrated its ability to improve the diagnostic performance of the computerized breast cancer detection method.

Using Pectoral Muscle Removers in Mammographic Image Process to Improve Accuracy in Breast Cancer

Cancer is a disease that attacks almost any organ or tissue of the body when abnormal cells grow uncontrollably and invade adjacent parts of the body. The second highest incidence of cancer in Indonesia is breast cancer with 42.1 cases per 100,000 population with an average mortality rate of 17 per 100,000 population. Mammography is a special imaging modality with x-rays to produce detailed breast images with at least 2 viewpoints, namely Craniocaudal (CC) or top view and Medio Lateral Oblique (MLO) or side view. The chest muscle area on the MLO display often interferes with the cancer identification process on mammography images because it has a dominant density and is similar to the density of cancer tissue. This research proposes a framework consisting of pectoral muscle detection on MLO display, image enhancement process, segmentation, and feature extraction. This study succeeded in increasing the accuracy of the MLO display mammography image after using the pectoral muscle remover using gradual edge detection and Hough lines Transform with the ratios of accuracy, precision, specificity, and sensitivity for images without pectoral muscle removers respectively were 33.59%, 30%, 11.49% and 80.48%. As for the images with pectoral muscle removers, the accuracy, precision, specificity, and sensitivity values respectively ​​were 68.67%, 64.71%, 57.14%, and 80.49%. For future projects, this research can be developed using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to improve accuracy. This is expected to help doctors and radiologists in the process of reading patient mammography so it can reduce mortality from breast cancer.

Impact of Image Enhancement Module for Analysis of Mammogram Images for Diagnostics of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is widespread around the world and can be cured if diagnosed at an early stage. Digital mammograms are used as the most effective imaging modalities for the diagnosis of breast cancer. However, mammography images suffer from low contrast, background noise as well as contrast as non-coherency among the regions, and these factors makes breast cancer diagnosis challenging. These problems can be overcome by using a new image enhancement technique. The objective of this research work is to enhance mammography images to improve the overall process of segmentation and classification of breast cancer diagnosis. We proposed the image enhancement for mammogram images, as well as the ablation of the pectoral muscle. The image enhancement technique involves several steps. In the first step, we process the mammography images in three channels (red, green and blue), the second step is based on the uniformity of the background on morphological operations, and the third step is to obtain a well-contrasted image using principal component analysis (PCA). The fourth step is based on the removal of the pectoral muscle using a seed-based region growth technique, and the last step contains the coherence of the different regions of the image using a second order Gaussian Laplacian (LoG) and an oriented diffusion filter to obtain a much-improved contrast image. The proposed image enhancement technique is tested with our data collected from different hospitals in Qassim health cluster Qassim province Saudi Arabia, and it contains the five Breast Imaging and Reporting System (BI-RADS) categories and this database contained 11,194 images (the images contain carnio-caudal (CC) view and mediolateral oblique(MLO) view of mammography images), and we used approximately 700 images to validate our database. We have achieved improved performance in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio, contrast, and effective measurement of enhancement (EME) as well as our proposed image enhancement technique outperforms existing image enhancement methods. This performance of our proposed method demonstrates the ability to improve the diagnostic performance of the computerized breast cancer detection method.

Segmentation of Breast Masses in Mammogram Image Using Multilevel Multiobjective Electromagnetism-Like Optimization Algorithm

In recent times, breast mass is the most diagnostic sign for early detection of breast cancer, where the precise segmentation of masses is important to reduce the mortality rate. This research proposes a new multiobjective optimization technique for segmenting the breast masses from the mammographic image. The proposed model includes three phases such as image collection, image denoising, and segmentation. Initially, the mammographic images are collected from two benchmark datasets like Digital Database for Screening Mammography (DDSM) and Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS). Next, image normalization and Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) techniques are employed for enhancing the visual capability and contrast of the mammographic images. After image denoising, electromagnetism-like (EML) optimization technique is used for segmenting the noncancer and cancer portions from the mammogram image. The proposed EML technique includes the advantages like enhanced robustness to hold the image details and adaptive to local context. Lastly, template matching is carried out after segmentation to detect the cancer regions, and then, the effectiveness of the proposed model is analysed in light of Jaccard coefficient, dice coefficient, specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy. Hence, the proposed model averagely achieved 92.3% of sensitivity, 99.21% of specificity, and 98.68% of accuracy on DDSM dataset, and the proposed model averagely achieved 92.11% of sensitivity, 99.45% of specificity, and 98.93% of accuracy on MIAS dataset.

PeMNet for Pectoral Muscle Segmentation

Simple Summary

Deep learning has become a popular technique in modern computer-aided (CAD) systems. In breast cancer CAD systems, breast pectoral segmentation is an important procedure to remove unwanted pectoral muscle in the images. In recent decades, there are numerous studies aiming at developing efficient and accurate methods for pectoral muscle segmentation. However, some methods heavily rely on manually crafted features that can easily lead to segmentation failure. Moreover, deep learning-based methods are still suffering from poor performance at high computational costs. Therefore, we propose a novel deep learning segmentation framework to provide fast and accurate pectoral muscle segmentation result. In the proposed framework, the novel network architecture enables more useful information to be used and therefore improve the segmentation results. The experimental results using two public datasets validated the effectiveness of the proposed network.

Abstract

As an important imaging modality, mammography is considered to be the global gold standard for early detection of breast cancer. Computer-Aided (CAD) systems have played a crucial role in facilitating quicker diagnostic procedures, which otherwise could take weeks if only radiologists were involved. In some of these CAD systems, breast pectoral segmentation is required for breast region partition from breast pectoral muscle for specific analysis tasks. Therefore, accurate and efficient breast pectoral muscle segmentation frameworks are in high demand. Here, we proposed a novel deep learning framework, which we code-named PeMNet, for breast pectoral muscle segmentation in mammography images. In the proposed PeMNet, we integrated a novel attention module called the Global Channel Attention Module (GCAM), which can effectively improve the segmentation performance of Deeplabv3+ using minimal parameter overheads. In GCAM, channel attention maps (CAMs) are first extracted by concatenating feature maps after paralleled global average pooling and global maximum pooling operation. CAMs are then refined and scaled up by multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for elementwise multiplication with CAMs in next feature level. By iteratively repeating this procedure, the global CAMs (GCAMs) are then formed and multiplied elementwise with final feature maps to lead to final segmentation. By doing so, CAMs in early stages of a deep convolution network can be effectively passed on to later stages of the network and therefore leads to better information usage. The experiments on a merged dataset derived from two datasets, INbreast and OPTIMAM, showed that PeMNet greatly outperformed state-of-the-art methods by achieving an IoU of 97.46%, global pixel accuracy of 99.48%, Dice similarity coefficient of 96.30%, and Jaccard of 93.33%, respectively.

Connected-UNets: a deep learning architecture for breast mass segmentation

Breast cancer analysis implies that radiologists inspect mammograms to detect suspicious breast lesions and identify mass tumors. Artificial intelligence techniques offer automatic systems for breast mass segmentation to assist radiologists in their diagnosis. With the rapid development of deep learning and its application to medical imaging challenges, UNet and its variations is one of the state-of-the-art models for medical image segmentation that showed promising performance on mammography. In this paper, we propose an architecture, called Connected-UNets, which connects two UNets using additional modified skip connections. We integrate Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) in the two standard UNets to emphasize the contextual information within the encoder–decoder network architecture. We also apply the proposed architecture on the Attention UNet (AUNet) and the Residual UNet (ResUNet). We evaluated the proposed architectures on two publically available datasets, the Curated Breast Imaging Subset of Digital Database for Screening Mammography (CBIS-DDSM) and INbreast, and additionally on a private dataset. Experiments were also conducted using additional synthetic data using the cycle-consistent Generative Adversarial Network (CycleGAN) model between two unpaired datasets to augment and enhance the images. Qualitative and quantitative results show that the proposed architecture can achieve better automatic mass segmentation with a high Dice score of 89.52%, 95.28%, and 95.88% and Intersection over Union (IoU) score of 80.02%, 91.03%, and 92.27%, respectively, on CBIS-DDSM, INbreast, and the private dataset.

An Automatic Detection and Localization of Mammographic Microcalcifications ROI with Multi-Scale Features Using the Radiomics Analysis Approach

Microcalcifications in breast tissue can be an early sign of breast cancer, and play a crucial role in breast cancer screening. This study proposes a radiomics approach based on advanced machine learning algorithms for diagnosing pathological microcalcifications in mammogram images and provides radiologists with a valuable decision support system (in regard to diagnosing patients). An adaptive enhancement method based on the contourlet transform is proposed to enhance microcalcifications and effectively suppress background and noise. Textural and statistical features are extracted from each wavelet layer's high-frequency coefficients to detect microcalcification regions. The top-hat morphological operator and wavelet transform segment microcalcifications, implying their exact locations. Finally, the proposed radiomic fusion algorithm is employed to classify the selected features into benign and malignant. The proposed model's diagnostic performance was evaluated on the MIAS dataset and compared with traditional machine learning models, such as the support vector machine, K-nearest neighbor, and random forest, using different evaluation parameters. Our proposed approach outperformed existing models in diagnosing microcalcification by achieving an 0.90 area under the curve, 0.98 sensitivity, and 0.98 accuracy. The experimental findings concur with expert observations, indicating that the proposed approach is most effective and practical for early diagnosing breast microcalcifications, substantially improving the work efficiency of physicians.

Breast Cancer Calcifications: Identification Using a Novel Segmentation Approach

Breast cancer is a strong risk factor of cancer amongst women. One in eight women suffers from breast cancer. It is a life-threatening illness and is utterly dreadful. The root cause which is the breast cancer agent is still under research. There are, however, certain potentially dangerous factors like age, genetics, obesity, birth control, cigarettes, and tablets. Breast cancer is often a malignant tumor that begins in the breast cells and eventually spreads to the surrounding tissue. If detected early, the illness may be reversible. The probability of preservation diminishes as the number of measurements increases. Numerous imaging techniques are used to identify breast cancer. This research examines different breast cancer detection strategies via the use of imaging techniques, data mining techniques, and various characteristics, as well as a brief comparative analysis of the existing breast cancer detection system. Breast cancer mortality will be significantly reduced if it is identified and treated early. There are technological difficulties linked to scans and people's inconsistency with breast cancer. In this study, we introduced a form of breast cancer diagnosis. There are different methods involved to collect and analyze details. In the preprocessing stage, the input data picture is filtered by using a window or by cropping. Segmentation can be performed using k-means algorithm. This study is aimed at identifying the calcifications found in bosom cancer in the last phase. The suggested approach is already implemented in MATLAB, and it produces reliable performance.

Deep-LIBRA: An artificial-intelligence method for robust quantification of breast density with independent validation in breast cancer risk assessment

Breast density is an important risk factor for breast cancer that also affects the specificity and sensitivity of screening mammography. Current federal legislation mandates reporting of breast density for all women undergoing breast cancer screening. Clinically, breast density is assessed visually using the American College of Radiology Breast Imaging Reporting And Data System (BI-RADS) scale. Here, we introduce an artificial intelligence (AI) method to estimate breast density from digital mammograms. Our method leverages deep learning using two convolutional neural network architectures to accurately segment the breast area. An AI algorithm combining superpixel generation and radiomic machine learning is then applied to differentiate dense from non-dense tissue regions within the breast, from which breast density is estimated. Our method was trained and validated on a multi-racial, multi-institutional dataset of 15,661 images (4,437 women), and then tested on an independent matched case-control dataset of 6368 digital mammograms (414 cases; 1178 controls) for both breast density estimation and case-control discrimination. On the independent dataset, breast percent density (PD) estimates from Deep-LIBRA and an expert reader were strongly correlated (Spearman correlation coefficient = 0.90). Moreover, in a model adjusted for age and BMI, Deep-LIBRA yielded a higher case-control discrimination performance (area under the ROC curve, AUC = 0.612 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.584, 0.640]) compared to four other widely-used research and commercial breast density assessment methods (AUCs = 0.528 to 0.599). Our results suggest a strong agreement of breast density estimates between Deep-LIBRA and gold-standard assessment by an expert reader, as well as improved performance in breast cancer risk assessment over state-of-the-art open-source and commercial methods.

Automated Segmentation of Abnormal Tissues in Medical Images

Nowadays, medical image modalities are almost available everywhere. These modalities are bases of diagnosis of various diseases sensitive to specific tissue type. Usually physicians look for abnormalities in these modalities in diagnostic procedures. Count and volume of abnormalities are very important for optimal treatment of patients. Segmentation is a preliminary step for these measurements and also further analysis. Manual segmentation of abnormalities is cumbersome, error prone, and subjective. As a result, automated segmentation of abnormal tissue is a need. In this study, representative techniques for segmentation of abnormal tissues are reviewed. Main focus is on the segmentation of multiple sclerosis lesions, breast cancer masses, lung nodules, and skin lesions. As experimental results demonstrate, the methods based on deep learning techniques perform better than other methods that are usually based on handy feature engineering techniques. Finally, the most common measures to evaluate automated abnormal tissue segmentation methods are reported

Deep convolutional neural network and emotional learning based breast cancer detection using digital mammography

Breast cancer is one of the deadly diseases among women. However, the chances of death are highly reduced if it gets diagnosed and treated at its early stage. Mammography is one of the reliable methods used by the radiologist to detect breast cancer at its initial stage. Therefore, an automatic and secure breast cancer detection system that accurately detects abnormalities not only increases the radiologist's diagnostic confidence but also provides more objective evidence. In this work, an automatic Diverse Features based Breast Cancer Detection (DFeBCD) system is proposed to classify a mammogram as normal or abnormal. Four sets of distinct feature types are used. Among them, features based on taxonomic indexes, statistical measures and local binary patterns are static. The proposed DFeBCD dynamically extracts the fourth set of features from mammogram images using a highway-network based deep convolution neural network (CNN). Two classifiers, Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Emotional Learning inspired Ensemble Classifier (ELiEC), are trained on these distinct features using a standard IRMA mammogram dataset. The reliability of the system performance is ensured by applying 5-folds cross-validation. Through experiments, we have observed that the performance of the DFeBCD system on dynamically generated features through highway network-based CNN is better than that of all the three individual sets of ad-hoc features. Furthermore, the hybridization of all four types of features improves the system's performance by nearly 2-3%. The performance of both the classifiers is comparable using the individual sets of ad-hoc features. However, the ELiEC classifier's performance is better than SVM using both hybrid and dynamic features.

Mass detection in mammograms by bilateral analysis using convolution neural network

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Automatic detection of the masses in mammograms is a big challenge and plays a crucial role to assist radiologists for accurate diagnosis. In this paper, a bilateral image analysis method based on Convolution Neural Network (CNN) is developed for mass detection in mammograms.

METHODS

The proposed bilateral mass detection method consists of two networks: a registration network for registering bilateral mammograms and a Siamese-Faster-RCNN network for mass detection using a pair of registered mammograms. In the first step, self-supervised learning network is built to learn the spatial transformation between bilateral mammograms. This network can directly estimate spatial transformation by maximizing an image-wise similarity metric and corresponding points labeling is not needed. In the second step, an end-to-end network combining the Region Proposal Network (RPN) and a Siamese Fully Connected (Siamese-FC) network is designed. Different from existing methods, the designed network integrates mass detection on single image with registered bilateral images comparison.

RESULTS

The proposed method is evaluated on three datasets (publicly available dataset INbreast and private dataset BCPKUPH and TXMD). For INbreast dataset, the proposed method achieves 0.88 true positive rate (TPR) with 1.12 false positives per image (FPs/I). For BCPKUPH dataset, the proposed method achieves 0.85 TPR with 1.86 FPs/I. For TXMD dataset, the proposed method achieves 0.85 TPR with 2.70 FPs/I.

CONCLUSIONS

Registration experimental result shows that the proposed method is suitable for bilateral mass detection. Mass detection experimental results show that the proposed method performs better than unilateral mass detection method, different bilateral connection schemes and image level fusion bilateral schemes.

A Semi-Supervised Method for Tumor Segmentation in Mammogram Images

Background:

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women. Mammogram images have an important role in the treatment of various states of this cancer. In recent years, machine learning methods have been widely used for tumor segmentation in mammogram images. Pixel-based segmentation methods have been presented using both supervised and unsupervised learning approaches. Supervised learning methods are usually fast and accurate, but they usually use a large number of labeled data. Besides, providing these samples is very hard and usually expensive. Unsupervised learning methods do not require the labels of the training data for decision making and they completely ignore the prior knowledge that may lead to a low performance. Semi-supervised learning methods which use a small number of labeled data solve the problem of providing the high number of samples in supervised methods, while they usually result in a higher accuracy in comparison to the unsupervised methods.

Methods:

In this study, we used a semisupervised method for tumor segmentation in which the pixel information is used for the classification. The static and gray level run length matrix features for each pixel are considered as the features, and Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) is used for feature reduction. A cotraining algorithm based on support vector machine and Bayes classifiers is proposed for tumor segmentation on MIAS data set.

Results and Conclusion:

The results show that the proposed method outperforms both supervised methods.

Computer Aided Detection of Clustered Microcalcification: A Survey

BACKGROUND

This paper attempts to pinpoint different techniques for Pectoral Muscle (PM) segmentation, Microcalcification (MC) detection and classification in digital mammograms. The segmentation of PM and detection of MC and its classification are mostly based on image processing and data mining techniques.

DISCUSSION

The review centered on major techniques in image processing and data mining that is employed for PM segmentation, MC detection and classification in digital mammograms. Breast cancer is one of the significant causes of death among women aged above 40. Mammography is considered the most successful means for prompt and timely detection of breast cancers. One notable visual indication of the malignant growth is the appearance of Masses, Architectural Distortions, and Microcalcification Clusters (MCCs). There are some disadvantages and hurdles for mankind viewers, and it is hard for radiologists to supply both precise and steady assessment for a large number of mammograms created in extensive screening. Computer Aided Detection has been employed to help radiologists in detecting MC and MCCs. The automatic recognition of malignant MCCs could be very helpful for diagnostic purpose. In this paper, we summarize the methods of automatic detection and classification of MCs in digitized mammograms. Pectoral muscle segmentation techniques are also summarized.

CONCLUSION

The techniques used for segmentation of PM, MC detection and classification in a digitized mammogram are reviewed.

Breast Cancer Detection using Crow Search Optimization based Intuitionistic Fuzzy Clustering with Neighborhood Attraction

Objective: Generally, medical images contain lots of noise that may lead to uncertainty in diagnosing the abnormalities. Computer aided diagnosis systems offer a support to the radiologists in identifying the disease affected area. In mammographic images, some normal tissues may appear to be similar to masses and it is tedious to differentiate them. Therefore, this paper presents a novel framework for the detection of mammographic masses that leads to early diagnosis of breast cancer. Methods: This work proposes a Crow search optimization based Intuitionistic fuzzy clustering approach with neighborhood attraction (CrSA-IFCM-NA) for identifying the region of interest. First order moments were extracted from preprocessed images. These features were given as input to the Intuitionistic fuzzy clustering algorithm. Instead of randomly selecting the initial centroids, crow search optimization technique is applied to choose the best initial centroid and the masses are separated. Experiments are conducted over the images taken from the Mammographic Image Analysis Society (mini-MIAS) database. Results: CrSA-IFCM-NA effectively separated the masses from mammogram images and proved to have good results in terms of cluster validity indices indicating the clear segmentation of the regions. Conclusion: The experimental results show that the accuracy of the proposed method proves to be encouraging for detection of masses. Thus, it provides a better assistance to the radiologists in diagnosing breast cancer at an early stage.