Title: Identification of tiny and large calcification in breast: a study on mammographic image analysis

Authors: Mahua Bhattacharya, Arpita Das

Addresses: Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior 474010, MP, India. ' Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta, Kolkata 700009, India

Abstract: Breast cancer throughout the world is a significant health problem for women. Small clusters of microcalcifications appearing as collection of white spots on mammograms indicate an early warning of breast cancer. In present work we have initiated computer–aided analysis of mammograms to automate the diagnostic procedures for breast cancer screening using multiresolution and FCM based clustering algorithms. Further region growing approach has been applied to segment considerably larger calcifications and the masses. The advantage of the proposed method is its ability to detect both tiny and comparatively larger calcifications in a single image and to reduce the false-positive appearance of microcalcifications in breast.

Keywords: breast cancer screening; microcalcification; wavelet transform; fuzzy c-means clustering; region growing; calcification; bioinformatics; mammograms; computer–aided analysis; automated diagnosis; clustering algorithms; false positives; cancer diagnosis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBRA.2010.036003

International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications, 2010 Vol.6 No.4, pp.418 - 434

Received: 24 Feb 2009
Accepted: 21 Jan 2010
Published online: 11 Oct 2010 *

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