Mammographic Image Analysis method for early detection of Breast Cancer

Vol. 7 No. 1

Year : 2011

Issue : Aug-Oct

Title  : Mammographic Image Analysis method for early detection of Breast Cancer 

Author Name  : Bhagwati Charan Patel, Dr.G.R. Sinha 

Synopsis  : 

Cancer has become one of the biggest threats to human life for many years, and is expected to become the leading cause of death over the next few decades. Mammography is a specific type of imaging that uses a low-dose x-ray system to examine breasts. A mammography exam, called a mammogram, is used to aid in the early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer facilitated with digital mammography can increase survival rate and chances for patient's complete recovery. Early detection performed on X-ray mammography is the key to improve breast cancer prognosis by the detection of any lesions or cysts in breasts.  In this paper we have present segmentation technique based on the extraction of catchments basins through a topographic representation of the mammography breast image. We have first carried out a preprocessing step which removes or attenuates the curvilinear structures present in a mammogram and corresponding to the blood vessels, veins, milk ducts, speculations and fibrous tissue. Multiple image enhancement steps were needed to exaggerate the differences between the frequency-domain images of normal and cancerous tissues. Mathematical morphology stresses the role of “shape” in image pre-processing, segmentation and object description. In this paper, the authors describe cancer detection system based on the analysis of Mammogram, which can be used by the doctors to decide whether further biopsy is needed, or not. The system will act as a decision support system and uses image processing techniques to analyze the mammograms. The application takes the input as mammogram image and reports the presence of suspicious region, if any. The paper also presents the results of experiment conducted on a large set of mammogram images.