Detection of clustered microcalcifications in small field digital mammography

The most frequent symptoms of ductal carcinoma recognised by mammography are clusters of microcalcifications. Their detection from mammograms is difficult, especially for glandular breasts. We present a new computer-aided detection system for small field digital mammography in planning of breast biopsy. The system processes the mammograms in several steps. First, we filter the original picture with a filter that is sensitive to microcalcification contrast shape. Then, we enhance the mammogram contrast by using wavelet-based sharpening algorithm. Afterwards, we present to radiologist, for visual analysis, such a contrast-enhanced mammogram with suggested positions of microcalcification clusters. We have evaluated the usefulness of the system with the help of four experienced radiologists, who found that it significantly improves the detection of microcalcifications in small field digital mammography.     

Interactive Selective and Adaptive Clustering for Detection of Microcalcifications in Mammograms

Estevez, L., Kehtarnavaz, N., and Wendt, R. III, Interactive Selective and Adaptive Clustering for Detection of Microcalcifications in Mammograms,Digital Signal Processing6(1996), 224–232.This paper presents a clustering algorithm, called interactive selective and adaptive clustering (Isaac), to assist radiologists in looking for small clusters of microcalcifications in mammograms. Isaac is developed to identify suspicious microcalcification regions which are missed by other classification techniques due to false positive samples in the feature space. It comprises two parts: (i) selective clustering and (ii) interactive adaptation. The first part reduces the number of false positives by identifying the microcalcification subspace or domains in the feature space. The second part allows the radiologist to improve results by interactively identifying additional false positive or true negative samples. Clinical evaluations of mammograms indicate the potential of using this algorithm as an effective tool to bring microcalcification areas to the attention of the radiologist during a routine reading session of mammograms.     

Comparative Evaluation of Two Neural Network Based Techniques for the Classification of Microcalcifications in Digital Mammograms

This paper investigates two neural network based techniques for the classification of microcalcifications in digital mammograms. Both techniques extract suspicious areas containing microcalcifications from digital mammograms and classify them into two categories: whether they contain benign or malignant clusters. The centroids and radii provided by expert radiologists are being used to locate and extract suspicious areas. Two neural networks based on iterative and non-iterative training methods are used to classify them into benign or malignant. The proposed techniques have been implemented in C++ on the SP2 supercomputer. The database from the Department of Radiology at the University of Nijmegen has been used for the experiments. The comparative results are very interesting and promising. Some of them are included in this paper.     

Bi-modal breast cancer classification system

Breast cancer is known as one of the major causes of mortality among women. Breast cancer can be treated with better patient outcomes and significantly lower costs if it is detected early. Digital mammograms are the type of medical images most often used, and which are the most reliable, for the detection of breast cancer. The presence of microcalcification clusters in mammograms contributes to evidence for the detection of early stages of cancer. In this paper, a bi-modal artificial neural network (ANN) based breast cancer classification system is proposed. The microcalcifications are extracted with adaptive neural networks that are trained with cancer/malignant and normal/benign breast digital mammograms of both cranio caudal (CC) and medio-latral oblique (MLO) views. The performance of the networks is evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Sensitivity–specificity of 98.0–100.0 for the CC view and 96.0–100.0 for the MLO view networks are recorded for 200 unseen digital database for screening mammography (DDSM) cases. The DDSM database, developed at the University of South Florida, is a resource for use by the mammographic image analysis research community. The OR logic is then used to fuse individual networks to get a best sensitivity–specificity of 100.0–100.0 for the ensemble. However, the overall sensitivity–specificity of the ANN ensemble is somewhat degraded at the expense of a robust or sensitive system, i.e., the probability to miss out a true positive case is minimized.     

Comparison of multiwavelet, wavelet, Haralick, and shape features for microcalcification classification in mammograms

We present an evaluation and comparison of the performance of four different texture and shape feature extraction methods for classification of benign and malignant microcalcifications in mammograms. For 103 regions containing microcalcification clusters, texture and shape features were extracted using four approaches: conventional shape quantifiers; co-occurrence-based method of Haralick; wavelet transformations; and multi-wavelet transformations. For each set of features, most discriminating features and their optimal weights were found using real-valued and binary genetic algorithms (GA) utilizing a k-nearest-neighbor classifier and a malignancy criterion for generating ROC curves for measuring the performance. The best set of features generated areas under the ROC curve ranging from 0.84 to 0.89 when using real-valued GA and from 0.83 to 0.88 when using binary GA. The multi-wavelet method outperformed the other three methods, and the conventional shape features were superior to the wavelet and Haralick features.     

基于形状选择性滤波和自适应背景抑制的乳腺钙化图像增强算法

钙化信息是乳腺癌早期诊断的一个重要依据,针对乳腺图像钙化信息受背景组织以及噪声影响而可视性差的问题,提出一种基于形状选择性滤波和自适应背景抑制的乳腺钙化图像增强算法。首先利用形状选择性滤波器提取出潜在非线状钙化信息,将钙化图像分为前景和背景区域;然后对背景信息的对比度进行自适应抑制,同时对前景钙化信息进行对比度增强处理,最后达到有选择地实现乳腺钙化图像中关键信息的可视化增强。实验结果表明,该方法可有针对的选择钙化区域进行对比度增强,同时可有效抑制背景图像中血管、组织等正常区域对钙化区域的影响。     

基于小波与统计学的乳腺微钙化点检测方法

提出了一种基于小波与统计学检测乳腺X线片中微钙化点的新方法。首先对数字化X片进行小波分解。为了提高图像的对比度，采用了多尺度自适应增益的图像增强方法。然后对增强后的图像细节分量运用统计学中的偏度和峰度来选取感兴趣区。最后利用箱线图极端值检测法确定微钙化点的位置。采用本文的方法对实际的数字化乳腺X片进行实验，结果表明该方法具有图像增强效果明显和钙化点定位准确等特点。     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: An improved data mining technique for classification and detection of breast cancer from mammograms

The high incidence of breast cancer in women has increased significantly in the recent years. Mammogram breast X-ray imaging is considered the most effective, low-cost, and reliable method in early detection of breast cancer. Although general rules for the differentiation between benign and malignant breast lesion exist, only 15–30% of masses referred for surgical biopsy are actually malignant. Physician experience of detecting breast cancer can be assisted by using some computerized feature extraction and classification algorithms. Computer-aided classification system was used to help in diagnosing abnormalities faster than traditional screening program without the drawback attribute to human factors. In this work, an approach is proposed to develop a computer-aided classification system for cancer detection from digital mammograms. The proposed system consists of three major steps. The first step is region of interest (ROI) extraction of 256 × 256 pixels size. The second step is the feature extraction; we used a set of 26 features, and we found that these features are capable of differentiating between normal and cancerous breast tissues in order to minimize the classification error. The third step is the classification process; we used the technique of the association rule mining to classify between normal and cancerous tissues. The proposed system was shown to have the large potential for cancer detection from digital mammograms.

     

Microcalcification diagnosis in digital mammography using extreme learning machine based on hidden Markov tree model of dual-tree complex wavelet transform

Diagnosis of benign and malignant microcalcifications in digital mammography using Computer-aided Diagnosis (CAD) system is critical for the early diagnosis of breast cancer. Wavelet transform based diagnosis methods are effective to accomplish this task, but limited by representing the correlation within each wavelet scale, these methods neglect the correlation between wavelet scales. In this paper, we apply the hidden Markov tree model of dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DTCWT-HMT) for microcalcification diagnosis in digital mammography. DTCWT-HMT can effectively capture the correlation between different wavelet coefficients and model the statistical dependencies and non-Gaussian statistics of real signals, is used to characterize microcalcifications for the diagnosis of benign and malignant cases. The combined features which consist of the DTCWT-HMT features and the DTCWT features are optimized by genetic algorithm (GA). Extreme learning machine (ELM), an efficient learning theory is employed as the classifier to diagnose the benign and malignant microcalcifications. The validity of the proposed method is evaluated on the Nijmegen, MIAS and DDSM datasets using area under curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC). The AUC values of 0.9856, 0.9941 and 0.9168 of the proposed method are achieved on Nijmegen, MIAS and DDSM, respectively. We compare the proposed method with state-of-the-art diagnosis methods, and the experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method for the diagnosis of the benign and malignant microcalcifications in mammograms in terms of the accuracy and stability.     

一种基于Top-hat的乳腺图像中钙化点的检测方法

钙化点是乳腺癌早期的一个主要放射学征象。为了实现数字乳腺图像中钙化点的自动检测，提出了一种基于Top—hat算子的钙化点检测方法。该方法采用形态学中的Top—hat算子对图像的背景进行抑制，然后结合孤立钙化点的灰度、纹理和对比度等特征对乳腺图像中的钙化点进行检测。与一般的检测方法相比，这种方法能够有效地检测到强背景中的弱小钙化点目标，而且检测结果贴近于钙化点病灶的真实形状。     

Texture-based analysis of clustered microcalcifications detected on mammograms

The need for early detection of breast cancer has led to establishing screening programs that generate large volumes of mammograms to be analyzed. These analysis are time consuming and labor intensive. Computerized analysis of mammograms has been suggested as “second opinion” or “pre-reader”.In this paper, we suggest a texture-based computerized analysis clusters of microcalcifications detected on mammograms in order to classify them into benign and malignant types.The test of the proposed system yielded a sensitivity of 100%, a specificity of 87.77% and a good classification rate of 89%; the area under the fitted ROC-curve using the MedCalc Statistical Software was 0.968.     

Microcalcification detection using fuzzy logic and scale space approaches

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of women mortality in the world. Since the causes are unknown, breast cancer cannot be prevented. It is difficult for radiologists to provide both accurate and uniform evaluation over the enormous number of mammograms generated in widespread screening. Computer-aided mammography diagnosis is an important and challenging task. Microcalcifications and masses are the early signs of breast carcinomas and their detection is one of the key issues for breast cancer control. In this study, a novel approach to microcalcification detection based on fuzzy logic and scale space techniques is presented. First, we employ fuzzy entropy principal and fuzzy set theory to fuzzify the images. Then, we enhance the fuzzified image. Finally, scale-space and Laplacian-of-Gaussian filter techniques are used to detect the sizes and locations of microcalcifications. A free-response operating characteristic curve is used to evaluate the performance. The major advantage of the proposed method is its ability to detect microcalcifications even in the mammograms of very dense breasts. A data set of 40 mammograms (Nijmegen database) containing 105 clusters of microcalcifications is studied. Experimental results demonstrate that the microcalcifications can be accurately and efficiently detected using the proposed approach. It can produce lower false positives and false negatives than the existing methods.     

Texture-based features for classification of mammograms using decision tree

Mammogram—breast X-ray—is considered the most effective, low cost, and reliable method in early detection of breast cancer. Although general rules for the differentiation between benign and malignant breast lesions exist, only 15–30 % of masses referred for surgical biopsy are actually malignant. In this work, an approach is proposed to develop a computer-aided classification system for cancer detection from digital mammograms. The proposed system consists of three major steps. The first step is region of interest (ROI) extraction of 256 × 256 pixels size. The second step is the feature extraction; we used a set of 19 GLCM and GLRLM features, and the 19 (nineteen) features extracted from gray-level run-length matrix and gray-level co-occurrence matrix could distinguish malignant masses from benign masses with an accuracy of 96.7 %. Further analysis was carried out by involving only 12 of the 19 features extracted, which consists of 5 features extracted from GLCM matrix and 7 features extracted from GLRL matrix. The 12 selected features are as follows: Energy, Inertia, Entropy, Maxprob, Inverse, SRE, LRE, GLN, RLN, LGRE, HGRE, and SRLGE; ARM with 12 features as prediction can distinguish malignant mass image and benign mass with a level of accuracy of 93.6 %. Further analysis showed that area under the receiver operating curve was 0.995, which means that the accuracy level of classification is good or very good. Based on that data, it was concluded that texture analysis based on GLCM and GLRLM could distinguish malignant image and benign image with considerably good result. The third step is the classification process; we used the technique of decision tree using image content to classify between normal and cancerous masses. The proposed system was shown to have the large potential for cancer detection from digital mammograms.     

Soft computing models based feature selection for TRUS prostate cancer image classification

Ultrasound imaging is the most suitable method for early detection of prostate cancer. It is very difficult to distinguish benign and malignant nature of the affliction in the early stage of cancer. This is reflected in the high percentage of unnecessary biopsies that are performed and many deaths caused by late detection or misdiagnosis. A computer based classification system can provide a second opinion to the radiologists. Generally, objects are described in terms of a set of measurable features in pattern recognition. The selection and quality of the features representing each pattern will have a considerable bearing on the success of subsequent pattern classification. Feature selection is a process of selecting the most wanted or dominating features set from the original features set in order to reduce the cost of data visualization and increasing classification efficiency and accuracy. The region of interest (ROI) is identified from transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) images using DBSCAN clustering with morphological operators after image enhancement using M3-filter. Then the 22 grey level co-occurrence matrix features are extracted from the ROIs. Soft computing model based feature selection algorithms genetic algorithm (GA), ant colony optimization (ACO) and QR are studied. In this paper, QR-ACO (hybridization of rough set based QR and ACO) and GA-ACO (hybridization GA and ACO) are proposed for reducing feature set in order to increase the accuracy and efficiency of the classification with regard to prostate cancer. The selected features may have the best discriminatory power for classifying prostate cancer based on TRUS images. Support vector machine is tailored for evaluation of the proposed feature selection methods through classification. Then, the comparative analysis is performed among these methods. Experimental results show that the proposed method QR-ACO produces significant results. Number of features selected using QR-ACO algorithm is minimal, is successful and has high detection accuracy.     

Mutual information-based SVM-RFE for diagnostic classification of digitized mammograms

Computer aided diagnosis (CADx) systems for digitized mammograms solve the problem of classification between benign and malignant tissues while studies have shown that using only a subset of features generated from the mammograms can yield higher classification accuracy. To this end, we propose a mutual information-based Support Vector Machine Recursive Feature Elimination (SVM-RFE) as the classification method with feature selection in this paper. We have conducted extensive experiments on publicly available mammographic data and the obtained results indicate that the proposed method outperforms other SVM and SVM-RFE-based methods.     

A novel image mining technique for classification of mammograms using hybrid feature selection

The image mining technique deals with the extraction of implicit knowledge and image with data relationship or other patterns not explicitly stored in the images. It is an extension of data mining to image domain. The main objective of this paper is to apply image mining in the domain such as breast mammograms to classify and detect the cancerous tissue. Mammogram image can be classified into normal, benign, and malignant class. Total of 26 features including histogram intensity features and gray-level co-occurrence matrix features are extracted from mammogram images. A hybrid approach of feature selection is proposed, which approximately reduces 75% of the features, and new decision tree is used for classification. The most interesting one is that branch and bound algorithm that is used for feature selection provides the best optimal features and no where it is applied or used for gray-level co-occurrence matrix feature selection from mammogram. Experiments have been taken for a data set of 300 images taken from MIAS of different types with the aim of improving the accuracy by generating minimum number of rules to cover more patterns. The accuracy obtained by this method is approximately 97.7%, which is highly encouraging.     

Twin support vector machines and subspace learning methods for microcalcification clusters detection

This paper presents a novel framework for microcalcification clusters (MCs) detection in mammograms. The proposed framework has three main parts: (1) first, MCs are enhanced by using a simple-but-effective artifact removal filter and a well-designed high-pass filter; (2) thereafter, subspace learning algorithms can be embedded into this framework for subspace (feature) selection of each image block to be handled; and (3) finally, in the resulted subspaces, the MCs detection procedure is formulated as a supervised learning and classification problem, and in this work, the twin support vector machine (TWSVM) is developed in decision-making of MCs detection. A large number of experiments are carried out to evaluate and compare the MCs detection approaches, and the effectiveness of the proposed framework is well demonstrated.     

基于改进LVQ算法的肺结节识别与分类

目前,肺癌的是发病率最高的肿瘤,若能在早期发现癌变并进行相应治疗,将极大的提高患者的生存率。肺癌的症状在早期表现为肺结节。以提高肺结节检测识别率并进行良恶性分类为目的,提出了一种改进的LVQ分类器算法。首先使用C-V算法对原始图像进行肺实质分割,再使用最优阈值法进行感兴趣区域提取,并进行特征提取和特征归一化。使用多次聚类算法检测肺结节。使用基于改进的LVQ分类器进行肺结节的良恶性进行分类。利用改进后的LVQ分类器在LIDC数据集上进行实验,得到了对良性结节的确诊率为87.3%,对恶性结节的确诊率为80.8%。实验结果表明,改进后的算法在良恶性结节分类上具有较高的确诊率,有助于提高医生的工作效率,实现肺结节的辅助发现。     

A comparison of different Gabor feature extraction approaches for mass classification in mammography

We investigate the performance of six different approaches for directional feature extraction for mass classification problem in digital mammograms. These techniques use a bank of Gabor filters to extract the directional textural features. Directional textural features represent structural properties of masses and normal tissues in mammograms at different orientations and frequencies. Masses and micro-calcifications are two early signs of breast cancer which is a major leading cause of death in women. For the detection of masses, segmentation of mammograms results in regions of interest (ROIs) which not only include masses but suspicious normal tissues as well (which lead to false positives during the discrimination process). The problem is to reduce the false positives by classifying ROIs as masses and normal tissues. In addition, the detected masses are required to be further classified as malignant and benign. The feature extraction approaches are evaluated over the ROIs extracted from MIAS database. Successive Enhancement Learning based weighted Support Vector Machine (SELwSVM) is used to efficiently classify the generated unbalanced datasets. The average accuracy ranges from 68 to 100 % as obtained by different methods used in our paper. Comparisons are carried out based on statistical analysis to make further recommendations.     

2D wavelet-based spectra with applications

A wavelet-based spectral method for estimating the (directional) Hurst parameter in isotropic and anisotropic non-stationary fractional Gaussian fields is proposed. The method can be applied to self-similar images and, in general, to d-dimensional data which scale. In the application part, the problems of denoising 2D fractional Brownian fields and classification of digital mammograms to benign and malignant are considered. In the first application, a Bayesian inference calibrated by information from the wavelet-spectral domain is used to separate the signal from the noise. In the second application, digital mammograms are classified into benign and malignant based on the directional Hurst exponents which prove to be discriminatory summaries.