Automatic pectoral muscle segmentation on mediolateral oblique view mammograms

Mammograms are X-ray images of the breast which are used to detect breast cancer. When mammograms are analyzed by computer, the pectoral muscle should preferably be excluded from processing intended for the breast tissue. For this and other reasons, it is important to identify and segment out the pectoral muscle. In this paper, a new, adaptive algorithm is proposed to automatically extract the pectoral muscle on digitized mammograms; it uses knowledge about the position and shape of the pectoral muscle on mediolateral oblique views. The pectoral edge is first estimated by a straight line which is validated for correctness of location and orientation. This estimate is then refined using iterative "cliff detection" to delineate the pectoral margin more accurately. Finally, an enclosed region, representing the pectoral muscle, is generated as a segmentation mask. The algorithm was found to be robust to the large variations in appearance of pectoral edges, to dense overlapping glandular tissue, and to artifacts like sticky tape. The algorithm has been applied to the entire Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) database of 322 images. The segmentation results were evaluated by two expert mammographic radiologists, who rated 83.9% of the curve segmentations to be adequate or better.     

Robust automatic breast and pectoral muscle segmentation from scanned mammograms

Breast skin–air interface and pectoral muscle segmentation are usually first steps in all CAD applications on scanned as well as digital mammograms. Breast skin–air interface segmentation is much more difficult task when performed on scanned mammograms than on digital mammograms. In case of pectoral muscle segmentation, segmentation difficulty of analog and digital mammograms is usually similar. In this paper we present adaptive contrast enhancement method for breast skin–air interface detection which combines usage of adaptive histogram equalization method on small region of interest which contains actual edge and edge detection operators. Pectoral muscle detection method uses combination of contrast enhancement using adaptive histogram equalization and polynomial curvature estimation on selected region of interest. This method makes segmentation of very low contrast pectoral muscle areas possible because of estimation used to segment areas which have lower contrast difference than detection threshold.     

An anatomically oriented breast coordinate system for mammogram analysis

We have developed a breast coordinate system that is based on breast anatomy to register female breasts into a common coordinate frame in 2-D mediolateral (ML) or mediolateral oblique (MLO) view mammograms. The breasts are registered according to the location of the pectoral muscle and the nipple and the shape of the breast boundary because these are the most robust features independent of the breast size and shape. On the basis of these landmarks, we have constructed a nonlinear mapping between the parameter frame and the breast region in the mammogram. This mapping makes it possible to identify the corresponding positions and orientations among all of the ML or MLO mammograms, which facilitates an implicit use of the registration, i.e., no explicit image warping is needed. We additionally show how the coordinate transform can be used to extract Gaussian derivative features so that the feature positions and orientations are registered and extracted without nonlinearly deforming the images. We use the proposed breast coordinate transform in a cross-sectional breast cancer risk assessment study of 490 women, in which we attempt to learn breast cancer risk factors from mammograms that were taken prior to when the breast cancer became visible to a radiologist. The coordinate system provides both the relative position and orientation information on the breast region from which the features are derived. In addition, the coordinate system can be used in temporal studies to pinpoint anatomically equivalent locations between the mammograms of each woman and among the mammograms of all of the women in the study. The results of the cross-sectional study show that the classification into cancer and control groups can be improved by using the new coordinate system, compared to other systems evaluated. Comparisons were performed using the area-under-the-receiver-operating-characteristic-curve score. In general, the new coordinate system makes an accurate anatomical registration of breasts possible, which suggests its wide applicability wherever 2-D mammogram registration is required.     

Detection of Clustered Microcalcifications on Mammograms Using Surrounding Region Dependence Method and Artificial Neural Network

Clustered microcalcifications on X-ray mammograms are an important sign in the detection of breast cancer. A statistical texture analysis method, called the surrounding region dependence method (SRDM), is proposed for the detection of clustered microcalcifications on digitized mammograms. The SRDM is based on the second-order histogram in two surrounding regions. This method defines four textural features to classify region of interests (ROIs) into positive ROIs containing clustered microcalcifications and negative ROIs of normal tissues. The database is composed of 64 positive and 76 negative ROI images, which are selected from digitized mammograms with a pixel size of 100 × 100 m² and 12 bits per pixel. An ROI is selected as an area of 128 × 128 pixels on the digitized mammograms. In order to classify ROIs into the two types, a three-layer backpropagation neural network is employed as a classifier. A segmentation of individual microcalcifications is also proposed to show their morphologies. The classification performance of the proposed method is evaluated by using the round-robin method and a free-response receiver operating-characteristics (FROC) analysis. A receiver operating-characteristics (ROC) analysis is employed to present the results of the round-robin testing for the case of several hidden neurons. The area under the ROC curve, A _z, is 0.997, which is achieved in the case of 4 hidden neurons. The FROC analysis is performed on 20 cropped images. A cropped image is selected as an area of 512 × 512 pixels on the digitized mammograms. In terms of the FROC, a sensitivity of more than 90% is obtained with a low false-positive (FP) detection rate of 0.67 per cropped image.     

Similarity relation matrix-based color edge detection

A novel edge detection algorithm for color images was described in this paper. In the proposed method, smoothness of each pixel in color image is firstly calculated by means of similarity relation matrix and is normalized to maximum gray level. In other words, color image in three-dimensional color spaces is mapped into one dimension. Accordingly the edges are performed in such a way that pixels lower than thresholds are assigned to be edge. Thus with proposed method, edge pixels in a color image are detected simultaneously without any complex calculations such as gradient, Laplace and statistical calculations.     

Analysis of asymmetry in mammograms via directional filtering with Gabor wavelets

This paper presents a procedure for the analysis of left-right (bilateral) asymmetry in mammograms. The procedure is based upon the detection of linear directional components by using a multiresolution representation based upon Gabor wavelets. A particular wavelet scheme with two-dimensional Gabor filters as elementary functions with varying tuning frequency and orientation, specifically designed in order to reduce the redundancy in the wavelet-based representation, is applied to the given image. The filter responses for different scales and orientation are analyzed by using the Karhunen-Loève (KL) transform and Otsu's method of thresholding. The KL transform is applied to select the principal components of the filter responses, preserving only the most relevant directional elements appearing at all scales. The selected principal components, thresholded by using Otsu's method, are used to obtain the magnitude and phase of the directional components of the image. Rose diagrams computed from the phase images and statistical measures computed thereof are used for quantitative and qualitative analysis of the oriented patterns. A total of 80 images from 20 normal cases, 14 asymmetric cases, and six architectural distortion cases from the Mini-MIAS (Mammographic Image Analysis Society, London, U.K.) database were used to evaluate the scheme using the leave-one-out methodology. Average classification accuracy rates of up to 74.4% were achieved.     

冲激信号SAR成像的方位分辨率分析

本文在分析冲激信号SAR成像特点的基础上,在发射和接收均为"超宽带信号"、"大方位积累角"的情况下,推导出了冲激信号SAR方位分辨率的解析表达式,并通过仿真实验验证了其正确性.     

Morphological Image Enlargements

This paper presents a method based in mathematical morphology to enlarge images. It does not make the low pass assumption which is common to all linear interpolation methods and which does not often hold for images. Pixels in smooth areas are properly interpolated by linear methods while those at the edges are not. The method begins with a linear interpolation and a gradient computation. The gradient serves as a measure of confidence about the linear interpolation. Then, the proposed algorithm processes the pixels in a certain order: first pixels with high confidence (smooth zones) of the image and those with a low one (edges) at the end. By doing so, it preserves both slow variations and sharp edges. The method can be applied to other image processing problems, such as edge enhancement or motion vector estimation, where there is an image and confidence information about each pixel.     

Edge Preserving Interpolation of Digital Images Using Fuzzy Inference

This paper presents a novel edge preserving interpolation method for digital images. This new method reduces drastically the blurring and jaggy artifacts at the high-contrast edges, which are generally found in the interpolated images using conventional methods. This high performance is achieved by two proposed operations: a fuzzy-inference based edge preserving interpolator and a highly oblique edge compensation scheme developed based on an edge orientation detector. The former synthesizes the interpolated pixels to match the image local characteristics. Hence, edge sharpness can be retained. However, due to the small footage of the fuzzy interpolation method, it cannot avoid edge jaggedness along the highly oblique edges that have very sharp angles against one of the coordinates. Therefore, a segment matching technique is developed to identify precisely the orientation of the highly oblique edges. Combining these two techniques, we improve significantly the visual quality of the interpolated images, particularly at the high-contrast edges. Both the synthesized images (such as letters) and the natural scenes (captured by camera) have been tested and the results are very promising.     

Subpixel edge detection and estimation with amicroprocessor-controlled line scan camera

A microprocessor-controlled line scan camera system for measuring edges and lengths of steel strips is described, and the problem of subpixel edge detection and estimation in a line image is considered. The edge image is assumed to change gradually in its intensity, and the true edge location may be between pixels. Detection and estimation of edges are based on measurement of gray values of the line images at a limited number of pixels. A two-stage approach is presented. At the first stage, a computationally simple discrete-template-matching method is used to place the estimated edge point to the nearest pixel value. Three second-stage methods designed for subpixel estimation are examined. The modified Chebyshev polynomial and the three-point interpolation method do not require much knowledge on the shape of the edge intensity. If the functional form of the edge is known, a least-square estimation method may be used for better accuracy. In the case of nonstationary Poisson noise, a recursive maximum-likelihood method for the first-stage edge detection, followed by subpixel estimation, is proposed     

基于图像自身信息的图像边缘检测阈值自动设定方法

从利用边缘像素空间关系和抑制伪边缘的角度出发,提出了一种基于图像自身信息的图像边缘检测阈值自动设定方法,并阐述了其物理意义。本文方法利用图像边缘连续度衡量边缘像素的空间关系,其极大值蕴含着边缘像素增长模式的转换;利用边缘段增量识别伪边缘的出现。对比实验结果表明,本文方法具有良好的稳定性和可靠性。     

Edge Detection of Highly Distorted Images Suffering from Impulsive Noise

A new edge detection method for highly distorted images, which suffer from impulsive noise, is introduced. The proposed method comprises three main stages; analysis for the impulsive behavior of the image pixels, restoration of the pixels which have impulsive behavior and finally, estimation of the edges. The simulation results reveal that the proposed method shows better performance than the other methods mentioned in this paper in the cases of preserving the details and detecting the edges correctly and continuously, especially when the noise ratio is very high.     

一种改进的SAR图像边缘检测方法

加权指数平均比率(ROEWA)边缘检测算子是一种较好的适用于SAR图像的边缘检测算子,但使用传统的计算梯度方向的方法却无法正确确定边缘点的方向。针对ROEWA算子存在的问题,该文根据Gabor滤波器具有的优秀的方向选择性这一性质,提出利用Gabor滤波器确定边缘方向的方法,完善了ROEWA边缘检测方法。实验结果证明,改进的ROEWA算子检测边缘及边缘方向的性能很好。     

融合模糊增强与改进Canny的植物叶脉边缘提取

针对植物叶脉边缘提取存在的问题,提出一种图 像模糊增强与改进Canny算子相结合的叶脉边缘提取方法。该方法首 先构造分段模糊隶属度函数对高低灰度进行不同处理,然后通过模糊增强函数来增强叶脉两 侧邻接区域灰度对比度,最后对 增强图像采用改进Canny算子提取叶脉边缘。改进Canny算子根据像素点与局部像素的均值差 来自适应的应用高斯滤波,以 减小滤波对边缘的平滑影响;采用Prewitt模板计算梯度幅值和方向,以减小噪声对梯度计 算的影响;采用线性插值技术实现 全向非极大值抑制,以更准确的实现边缘细化。实验结果表明,本文方法在低照度叶片和光 照不均叶片下提取叶脉边缘的 PSNR分别为51.136 dB和50.217 dB,与传统边缘提取方法及 相关文献相比,本文方法对边界模糊性不敏感,可以更加有效地提取完整精细的叶脉边缘。     

Image super-resolution by curve fitting in the threshold decomposition domain

A new curve-fitting scheme is proposed in this paper to produce super-resolution images from a single low-resolution source image. The most unique feature of this method is that the threshold decomposition is performed on the given source image to obtain multiple binary images so that the curve-fitting applied on each resulted binary image can be made very efficient and accurate, thus allowing us to focus on tiny objects and thin structures so as to achieve rather nice visual results even when a large up-scaling factor is used. Two novel techniques are further proposed to improve the visual quality: (1) a spreading technique (applied on some significant pixels detected in each threshold decomposed binary image) is used to remove ladder-like false edges that often appear visually in super-resolution images, and (2) an edge correction (guided by the edge information extracted from the original source image) is used to sharpen all inherent edges. Our results are compared with those achieved by using the state-of-arts techniques, showing the ability of our algorithm to achieve a better visual quality in smooth areas as well as for sharp edges and small objects.     

A robust algorithm for reduction of truncation artifact in chemical shift images

A new iterative technique to reduce the ringing artifacts in chemical shift images due to the truncation of the high spatial frequency is presented. In this approach the authors extrapolate the high spatial frequency data guided by the edge information obtained from a high resolution anatomic image of the region of interest. The fact that the edge information obtained from the anatomic image can be off by a few pixels (due to factors such as chemical shift artifact, error in edge detection or misregistration) is taken into account by assuming a confidence interval of several pixels around the anatomic edges. The algorithm is validated on simulated and in vivo data, and excellent results were obtained.     

An edge fusion scheme for image denoising based on anisotropic diffusion models

In this paper, we propose an enhanced anisotropic diffusion model. The improved model can classify finely image information as smooth regions, edges, corners and isolated noises by characteristic parameters and gradient variance parameter. And for different image information the eigenvalues of diffusion tensor are designed to conduct adaptive diffusion. Moreover, an edge fusion scheme is posed to preserve edges after denoising by combing different denoising and edge detection methods. Firstly, different denoising methods are applied for noisy image to obtain denoised images, and the best method among them is selected as main method. Then edge images of denoised images are obtained by edge detection methods. Finally, by fusing edge images together more integrated edges can be achieved to replace edges of denoised image obtained by main method. The experimental results show the proposed model can denoise meanwhile preserve edges and corners, and the edge fusion scheme is accurate and effective.     

Improvement of sensitivity of breast cancer diagnosis with adaptiveneighborhood contrast enhancement of mammograms

Mammograms are difficult to interpret, especially of cancers at their early stages. We analyze the effectiveness of our adaptive neighborhood contrast enhancement (ANCE) technique in increasing the sensitivity of breast cancer diagnosis. Seventy-eight screen-film mammograms of 21 difficult cases (14 benign and seven malignant), 222 screen-film mammograms of 28 interval cancer patients and six benign control cases were digitized with a high-resolution of about 4096×2048×10-bit pixels and then processed with the ANCE method. Unprocessed and processed digitized mammograms as well as the original films were presented to six experienced radiologists for a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) evaluation for the difficult case set and to three reference radiologists for the interval cancer set. The results show that the radiologists' performance with the ANCE-processed images is the best among the three sets of images (original, digitized, and enhanced) in terms of area under the ROC curve and that diagnostic sensitivity is improved by the ANCE algorithm. All of the 19 interval cancer cases not detected with the original films of earlier mammographic examinations were diagnosed as malignant with the corresponding ANCE-processed versions, while only one of the six benign cases initially labeled correctly with the original mammograms was interpreted as malignant after enhancement. This study demonstrates the potential for improvement of diagnostic performance in early detection of breast cancer with digital image enhancement     

Combining spatial and scale-space techniques for edge detection to provide a spatially adaptive wavelet-based noise filtering algorithm

New methods for detecting edges in an image using spatial and scale-space domains are proposed. A priori knowledge about geometrical characteristics of edges is used to assign a probability factor to the chance of any pixel being on an edge. An improved double thresholding technique is introduced for spatial domain filtering. Probabilities that pixels belong to a given edge are assigned based on pixel similarity across gradient amplitudes, gradient phases and edge connectivity. The scale-space approach uses dynamic range compression to allow wavelet correlation over a wider range of scales. A probabilistic formulation is used to combine the results obtained from filtering in each domain to provide a final edge probability image which has the advantages of both spatial and scale-space domain methods. Decomposing this edge probability image with the same wavelet as the original image permits the generation of adaptive filters that can recognize the characteristics of the edges in all wavelet detail and approximation images regardless of scale. These matched filters permit significant reduction in image noise without contributing to edge distortion. The spatially adaptive wavelet noise-filtering algorithm is qualitatively and quantitatively compared to a frequency domain and two wavelet based noise suppression algorithms using both natural and computer generated noisy images.     

Statistical Study of Edges in TV Pictures

The present study is devoted to the statistical analysis of edges in still monochrome TV pictures. The visual information carried by the edges is especially important both for image interpretation and for subjective image quality evaluation. Statistical knowledge on edges is helpful to improve image coding techniques significantly as well as processing techniques for scene analysis. After an introduction on nonstationary local statistical models, we describe the parameters of edges and the methods used to measure them. Statistical data collected on these parameters are then presented. The data concern orientation, edge length, edge width, runlength between edges and edge slope probability distributions as well as the measure of orientation continuity along an edge and the relative frequencies of edge pixels and contrasted isolated pixels.