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Characterization of mammographic masses based on level set segmentation with new image features and patient information
Author(s) -
Shi Jiazheng,
Sahiner Berkman,
Chan HeangPing,
Ge Jun,
Hadjiiski Lubomir,
Helvie Mark A.,
Nees Alexis,
Wu YiTa,
Wei Jun,
Zhou Chuan,
Zhang Yiheng,
Cui Jing
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.2820630
Subject(s) - artificial intelligence , computer aided diagnosis , cad , pattern recognition (psychology) , computer science , mammography , segmentation , linear discriminant analysis , receiver operating characteristic , feature selection , image segmentation , medicine , machine learning , breast cancer , cancer , engineering drawing , engineering
Computer‐aided diagnosis (CAD) for characterization of mammographic masses as malignant or benign has the potential to assist radiologists in reducing the biopsy rate without increasing false negatives. The purpose of this study was to develop an automated method for mammographic mass segmentation and explore new image based features in combination with patient information in order to improve the performance of mass characterization. The authors’ previous CAD system, which used the active contour segmentation, and morphological, textural, and spiculation features, has achieved promising results in mass characterization. The new CAD system is based on the level set method and includes two new types of image features related to the presence of microcalcifications with the mass and abruptness of the mass margin, and patient age. A linear discriminant analysis (LDA) classifier with stepwise feature selection was used to merge the extracted features into a classification score. The classification accuracy was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. The authors’ primary data set consisted of 427 biopsy‐proven masses (200 malignant and 227 benign) in 909 regions of interest (ROIs) (451 malignant and 458 benign) from multiple mammographic views. Leave‐one‐case‐out resampling was used for training and testing. The new CAD system based on the level set segmentation and the new mammographic feature space achieved a view‐basedA zvalue of 0.83 ± 0.01 . The improvement compared to the previous CAD system was statistically significant( p = 0.02 ) . When patient age was included in the new CAD system, view‐based and case‐basedA zvalues were 0.85 ± 0.01 and 0.87 ± 0.02 , respectively. The study also demonstrated the consistency of the newly developed CAD system by evaluating the statistics of the weights of the LDA classifiers in leave‐one‐case‐out classification. Finally, an independent test on the publicly available digital database for screening mammography with 132 benign and 197 malignant ROIs containing masses achieved a view‐basedA zvalue of 0.84 ± 0.02 .