A fast algorithm for intra-breast segmentation of digital mammograms for CAD systems
R. Campanini, E. Angelini, Emiro Iampieri, Nico Lanconelli, Matteo Masotti, Matteo Roffilli, O. Schiaratura, Massimiliano Zanoni · 2004
Current CAD systems always demand better performance, both in terms of the best sensitivity-specificity tradeoff and of the processing time. In order to decrease the false positive rate and to increase the time responsiveness of our CAD system, we present a powerful algorithm that performs an intra-breast segmentation. Starting from a digital mammogram and by using a combination of different techniques, the proposed algorithm produces a binary map showing the locations of the breast with higher probability of containing a suspect mass. Experimental trials performed on 317 mammograms show that our algorithm is able to reduce the intra-breast searching area down to 6% of the entire breast area, while maintaining almost the same negative rate. Typical dimension of images is about 2800×2000 pixels at 13 bits of gray level resolution. The set of images was gathered from FFDM units coming from two different hospitals.