Automatic detection of clustered microcalcifications in digital mammograms: Study on applying Adaboost with SVM-based component classifiers

Automatic detection of clustered microcalcifications in digital mammograms using mathematical morphology and neural networks

Mammography is one of the most efficient imaging techniques for the early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer in woman. The appearance of microcalcifications (MCs) in X-ray mammograms can be regarded as important early diagnostic feature of breast cancer. However, the detection of MCs in X-ray mammograms only depend on radiologists by visual inspection is a difficult task. In this paper, a novel algorithm for the automated detection of MCs in digital mammograms is described. The aim of approach is to locate suspicious MCs by analyzing the distribution of brightness over the digital mammograms. The algorithm for the detection of MCs is performed in two steps. First, the digital X-ray mammogram intensity surface is well-fitted by the least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM), and then the maximum extremum points are detected on the fitted intensity surface by convolving the image with the second order directional derivative operators deduced from the mapped LS-SVM with mixture of kernels. The proposed approach is developed and evaluated by using MIAS database. The experimental results demonstrate the possible MCs are detected accurately and efficiently.

This paper presents a machine learning based approach for the discrimination of malignant and benign microcalcification (MC) clusters in digital mammograms. A series of morphological operations was carried out to facilitate the feature extraction from segmented microcalcification. A combination of morphological, texture, and distribution features from individual MC components and MC clusters were extracted and a correlation-based feature selection technique was used. The clinical relevance of the selected features is discussed. The proposed method was evaluated using three different databases: Optimam Mammography Image Database (OMI-DB), Digital Database for Screening Mammography (DDSM), and Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) database. The best classification accuracy (%) was achieved for OPTIMAM using a stack generalization classifier with 10-fold cross validation obtaining an A value equal to .

Microcalcification (MC) clusters in mammograms can be important early signs of breast cancer in women. Accurate detection of MC clusters is an important but challenging problem. In this paper, we propose the use of a recently developed machine learning technique -- relevance vector machine (RVM) -- for automatic detection of MCs in digitized mammograms. RVM is based on Bayesian estimation theory, and as a feature it can yield a decision function that depends on only a very small number of so-called <i>relevance vectors</i>. We formulate MC detection as a supervised-learning problem, and use RVM to classify if an MC object is present or not at each location in a mammogram image. MC clusters are then identified by grouping the detected MC objects. The proposed method is tested using a database of 141 clinical mammograms, and compared with a support vector machine (SVM) classifier which we developed previously. The detection performance is evaluated using the free-response receiver operating characteristic (FROC) curves. It is demonstrated that the RVM classifier matches closely with the SVM classifier in detection performance, and does so with a much sparser kernel representation than the SVM classifier. Consequently, the RVM classifier greatly reduces the computational complexity, making it more suitable for real-time processing of MC clusters in mammograms.

Detection of microcalcifications in digital mammograms using combined model-based and statistical textural features

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

In this paper, we present a novel approach to detect microcalcifications (MCCs) in the mammograms. Microcalcification has approximately a size of several pixels in diameter on early cancer mammograms and has low contrast. So it is difficult to detection the microcalcifications. The essential idea of propose approach is to apply morphological and wavelet transform to locate the micro calcifications in digital mammograms. The presented method overcome higher true positive rate (TPR) but higher false positive (FP) problem by using single wavelet transform or morphology. The experiment results show the presented method has higher TPR and reducing FP obviously. Using the mammogram data form the Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) database the TPR is 80.2% at the cost of average 2.5 false microcalcifications per region of interest (ROI)

Clustered microcalcifications (MCCs) on mammograms are important hints of breast cancer. Nevertheless, it is a complex and difficult task for radiologists to detect the clustered MCCs from the tissue background of mammograms only by naked eyes. This paper presents a method for computer-aided detection of MCCs in digital mammograms. The detection algorithm mainly consists of two different methods. The first one, based on the difference-image technique, recognizes high-frequency signals and very high-frequency noise. The second one is able to extract high-frequency signal by exploiting a wavelet based noise suppression and neural network (NN) classification. In the false-positive reduction step, false signals are separated from MCCs by means of an AND operation on signals from two methods. The algorithm is tested with a series of clinical mammograms. A sensitivity ofmore than 90% is obtained at a relatively low false-positive (FP) detection of 2.18 per image. The results are compared with thejudgement ofradiological experts, and they are very encouraging.

The presence of microcalcification clusters in digital mammograms is a primary indicator of early stages of malignant types of breast cancer and its detection is important to prevent the disease. This paper uses a procedure for the classification of microcalcification clusters in mammograms using sequential Difference of Gaussian filters (DoG) and feedforward Neural Networks (NN). Three methods using class separability, forward sequential search and genetic algorithms for feature selection are compared. We found that the use of Genetic Algorithms (GAs) for selecting the features from microcalcifications and microcalcification clusters that will be the inputs of a feedforward Neural Network (NN) results mainly in improvements in overall accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the classification.

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems in mammography have been developed and investigated for several years and recently they have left the research stage to enter the clinical stage. The purpose of this article is to review the present situation of mammography for breast cancer detection and the role played by CAD systems. Results from the recent literature show that CAD systems have the potential to improve the sensitivities of radiologists in the detection of malignant clustered microcalcifications and masses, while keeping specificities at acceptable levels. This leads to the conclusion that CAD systems can be incorporated into clinical practice as a double reading option to radiologists. However, some issues have yet to be tackled for CAD systems to gain better acceptance and more widespread use worldwide.

Microcalcification detection in full-field digital mammograms: A fully automated computer-aided system

The existence of microcalcifications (MCs) is an important marker of malignancy in breast cancer. In spite of the benefits in mass detection for dense breasts, ultrasonography is believed that it might not reliably detect MCs. For computer aided diagnosis systems, however, accurate detection of MCs has the possibility of improving the performance in both Breast Imaging-Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) lexicon description for calcifications and malignancy classification. We propose a new efficient and effective method for MC detection using image enhancement and threshold adjacency statistics (TAS). The main idea of TAS is to threshold an image and to count the number of white pixels with a given number of adjacent white pixels. Our contribution is to adopt TAS features and apply image enhancement to facilitate MC detection in ultrasound images. We employed fuzzy logic, tophat filter, and texture filter to enhance images for MCs. Using a total of 591 images, the classification accuracy of the proposed method in MC detection showed 82.75%, which is comparable to that of Haralick texture features (81.38%). When combined, the performance was as high as 85.11%. In addition, our method also showed the ability in mass classification when combined with existing features. In conclusion, the proposed method exploiting image enhancement and TAS features has the potential to deal with MC detection in ultrasound images efficiently and extend to the real-time localization and visualization of MCs.

Microcalcifications (MCs) are the main symptoms of breast cancer in the mammograms. This paper proposed a new computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) algorithm to detect the MCs. At first, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) was applied to extract the high-frequency signal, and thresholding with hysteresis was used to locate the suspicious MCs. Then, filling dilation was utilized to segment the desired regions. During the detection process, ANFIS was applied for auto-adjustment, making the CAD more adaptive. Finally, the segmented MCs were classified with MLP, and a satisfying result validated this method.

Simultaneous detection and classification of breast masses in digital mammograms via a deep learning YOLO-based CAD system

In this paper we present a method for developing a fully automated computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system to help radiologist in detecting and diagnosing micro-calcifications (MCCs) in digital format mammograms. One aim of the CAD system is to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of screening procedures by using computer. Another aim of the CAD is to extract and analyze the characteristics of vary lesions in an objective manner, then can improve the diagnostic accuracy and reduce the numbers of false-positive diagnoses of malignancies. Automatic segmentation, features extraction, suspicious area detection, classification and a back propagation neural network (BPNN) techniques were used in the development of this system. And the BPNN was used to classifying the marked regions into benign and malignant as the most important stage.