An evaluation and ranking of evolutionary algorithms in segmenting abnormal masses in digital mammograms

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide and the second main cause of cancer mortality after lung cancer. Up to now, there still no prevention nor early symptoms of breast cancer. Early detection can decrease significantly the mortality rate as the disease can be treated at an early stage. X-Ray is the current screening method that helps in detecting the most two common abnormalities of the breast, masses and micro-calcifications. However, interpreting mammograms is challenging in dense breasts as the abnormal masses and the normal glandular tissue of the breast have similar characteristics. Recently, the evolutionary algorithms have been widely used in image segmentation. In this paper, we evaluate and compare the performance of six most used evolutionary algorithms, invasive weed optimization (IWO), genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), electromagnetism-like optimization (EMO), ant colony optimization (ACO), and artificial bee colony (ABC) in terms of clustering abnormal masses in the breast, particularly dense and extremely dense breasts. This evaluation is conducted based on quantitative metrics including Cohen’s Kappa, correlation, and false positive and false negative rates. The evolutionary algorithms are then ranked based on two multi-criteria decision analysis methods, the Preference Ranking Organization Method for the Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE) and the Graphical Analysis for Interactive Aid (GAIA).