Segmentation of Breast Masses in Digital Mammograms Using Adaptive Median Filtering and Texture Analysis

Breast cancer continues to be one of the major causes of death among women. Early detection is a key factor to the success of treatment process. X-ray mammography is one of the most common procedures for diagnosing breast cancer due to its simplicity, portability and cost effectiveness. Mass detection using Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) schemes was an active field of research in the past few years, and some of these studies showed a promising future. T`hese CAD systems serve as a second decision tool to radiologists for discovering masses in the mammograms. In this paper, a breast mass segmentation method is presented based on adaptive median filtering and texture analysis. The algorithm is implemented using MATLAB environment. The program accepts a digital mammographic image (images taken from the Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) database). Adaptive median filtering is applied for contouring the image, then the best contour is chosen based on the texture properties of the resulting Region-of-Interest (ROI). The proposed CAD system produces (92.307%) mass sensitivity at 2.75 False Positive per Image (FPI) which is considered as a proper result in this field of research.