Fractal Analysis Of Breast Masses In Mammograms

Fractal analysis is useful in digital image processing for the characterization of shape roughness and gray-scale texture or complexity. Breast masses present shape and gray-scale characteristics in mammograms that vary between benign masses and malignant tumors. This book demonstrates the use of fractal analysis to classify breast masses as benign masses or malignant tumors based on the irregularity exhibited in their contours and the gray-scale variability exhibited in their mammographic images. A few different approaches are described to estimate the fractal dimension (FD) of the contour of a mass, including the ruler method, box-counting method, and the power spectral analysis (PSA) method. Procedures are also described for the estimation of the FD of the gray-scale image of a mass using the blanket method and the PSA method. To facilitate comparative analysis of FD as a feature for pattern classification of breast masses, several other shape features and texture measures are described in the book. The shape features described include compactness, spiculation index, fractional concavity, and Fourier factor. The texture measures described are statistical measures derived from the gray-level cooccurrence matrix of the given image. Texture measures reveal properties about the spatial distribution of the gray levels in the given image; therefore, the performance of texture measures may be dependent on the resolution of the image. For this reason, an analysis of the effect of spatial resolution or pixel size on texture measures in the classification of breast masses is presented in the book. The results demonstrated in the book indicate that fractal analysis is more suitable for characterization of the shape than the gray-level variations of breast masses, with area under the receiver operating characteristics of up to 0.93 with a dataset of 111 mammographic images of masses. The methods and results presented in the book are useful for computer-aided diagnosis of breast cancer. Table of Contents: Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Breast Cancer / Detection and Analysis of\newline Breast Masses / Datasets of Images of Breast Masses / Methods for Fractal Analysis / Pattern Classification / Results of Classification of Breast Masses / Concluding Remarks

Fractal analysis is useful in digital image processing for the characterization of shape roughness and gray-scale texture or complexity. Breast masses present shape and gray-scale characteristics in mammograms that vary between benign masses and malignant tumors. This book demonstrates the use of fractal analysis to classify breast masses as benign masses or malignant tumors based on the irregularity exhibited in their contours and the gray-scale variability exhibited in their mammographic images. A few different approaches are described to estimate the fractal dimension (FD) of the contour of a mass, including the ruler method, box-counting method, and the power spectral analysis (PSA) method. Procedures are also described for the estimation of the FD of the gray-scale image of a mass using the blanket method and the PSA method. To facilitate comparative analysis of FD as a feature for pattern classification of breast masses, several other shape features and texture measures are described in the book. The shape features described include compactness, spiculation index, fractional concavity, and Fourier factor. The texture measures described are statistical measures derived from the gray-level cooccurrence matrix of the given image. Texture measures reveal properties about the spatial distribution of the gray levels in the given image; therefore, the performance of texture measures may be dependent on the resolution of the image. For this reason, an analysis of the effect of spatial resolution or pixel size on texture measures in the classification of breast masses is presented in the book. The results demonstrated in the book indicate that fractal analysis is more suitable for characterization of the shape than the gray-level variations of breast masses, with area under the receiver operating characteristics of up to 0.93 with a dataset of 111 mammographic images of masses. The methods and results presented in the book are useful for computer-aided diagnosis of breast cancer. Table of Contents: Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Breast Cancer / Detection and Analysis of\newline Breast Masses / Datasets of Images of Breast Masses / Methods for Fractal Analysis / Pattern Classification / Results of Classification of Breast Masses / Concluding Remarks

Malignant tumors due to breast cancer and masses due to benign disease appear in mammograms with different shape characteristics: the former usually have rough, spiculated, or microlobulated contours, whereas the latter commonly have smooth, round, oval, or macrolobulated contours. Features that characterize shape roughness and complexity can assist in distinguishing between malignant tumors and benign masses. In spite of the established importance of shape factors in the analysis of breast tumors and masses, difficulties exist in obtaining accurate and artifact-free boundaries of the related regions from mammograms. Whereas manually drawn contours could contain artifacts related to hand tremor and are subject to intra-observer and inter-observer variations, automatically detected contours could contain noise and inaccuracies due to limitations or errors in the procedures for the detection and segmentation of the related regions. Modeling procedures are desired to eliminate the artifacts in a given contour, while preserving the important and significant details present in the contour. This book presents polygonal modeling methods that reduce the influence of noise and artifacts while preserving the diagnostically relevant features, in particular the spicules and lobulations in the given contours. In order to facilitate the derivation of features that capture the characteristics of shape roughness of contours of breast masses, methods to derive a signature based on the turning angle function obtained from the polygonal model are described. Methods are also described to derive an index of spiculation, an index characterizing the presence of convex regions, an index characterizing the presence of concave regions, an index of convexity, and a measure of fractal dimension from the turning angle function. Results of testing the methods with a set of 111 contours of 65 benign masses and 46 malignant tumors are presented and discussed. It is shown that shape modeling and analysis can lead to classification accuracy in discriminating between benign masses and malignant tumors, in terms of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, of up to 0.94. The methods have applications in modeling and analysis of the shape of various types of regions or objects in images, computer vision, computer graphics, and analysis of biomedical images, with particular significance in computer-aided diagnosis of breast cancer. Table of Contents: Analysis of Shape / Polygonal Modeling of Contours / Shape Factors for Pattern Classification / Classification of Breast Masses

Architectural distortion is an important and early sign of breast cancer, but because of its subtlety, it is a common cause of false-negative findings on screening mammograms. Screening mammograms obtained prior to the detection of cancer could contain subtle signs of early stages of breast cancer, in particular, architectural distortion. This book presents image processing and pattern recognition techniques to detect architectural distortion in prior mammograms of interval-cancer cases. The methods are based upon Gabor filters, phase portrait analysis, procedures for the analysis of the angular spread of power, fractal analysis, Laws' texture energy measures derived from geometrically transformed regions of interest (ROIs), and Haralick's texture features. With Gabor filters and phase-portrait analysis, 4,224 ROIs were automatically obtained from 106 prior mammograms of 56 interval-cancer cases, including 301 true-positive ROIs related to architectural distortion, and from 52 mammograms of 13 normal cases. For each ROI, the fractal dimension, the entropy of the angular spread of power, 10 Laws' texture energy measures, and Haralick's 14 texture features were computed. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves obtained using the features selected by stepwise logistic regression and the leave-one-image-out method are 0.77 with the Bayesian classifier, 0.76 with Fisher linear discriminant analysis, and 0.79 with a neural network classifier. Free-response ROC analysis indicated sensitivities of 0.80 and 0.90 at 5.7 and 8.8 false positives (FPs) per image, respectively, with the Bayesian classifier and the leave-one-image-out method. The present study has demonstrated the ability to detect early signs of breast cancer 15 months ahead of the time of clinical diagnosis, on the average, for interval-cancer cases, with a sensitivity of 0.8 at 5.7 FP/image. The presented computer-aided detection techniques, dedicated to accurate detection and localization of architectural distortion, could lead to efficient detection of early and subtle signs of breast cancer at pre-mass-formation stages. Table of Contents: Introduction / Detection of Early Signs of Breast Cancer / Detection and Analysis of Oriented Patterns / Detection of Potential Sites of Architectural Distortion / Experimental Set Up and Datasets / Feature Selection and Pattern Classification / Analysis of Oriented Patterns Related to Architectural Distortion / Detection of Architectural Distortion in Prior Mammograms / Concluding Remarks

The book is a collection of high-quality peer-reviewed research papers presented in Proceedings of International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Evolutionary Algorithms in Engineering Systems (ICAEES 2014) held at Noorul Islam Centre for Higher Education, Kumaracoil, India. These research papers provide the latest developments in the broad area of use of artificial intelligence and evolutionary algorithms in engineering systems. The book discusses wide variety of industrial, engineering and scientific applications of the emerging techniques. It presents invited papers from the inventors/originators of new applications and advanced technologies.

This volume presents the proceedings of Medicon 2016, held in Paphos, Cyprus. Medicon 2016 is the XIV in the series of regional meetings of the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) in the Mediterranean. The goal of Medicon 2016 is to provide updated information on the state of the art on Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing under the main theme “Systems Medicine for the Delivery of Better Healthcare Services”. Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing cover complementary disciplines that hold great promise for the advancement of research and development in complex medical and biological systems. Research and development in these areas are impacting the science and technology by advancing fundamental concepts in translational medicine, by helping us understand human physiology and function at multiple levels, by improving tools and techniques for the detection, prevention and treatment of disease. Medicon 2016 provides a common platform for the cross fertilization of ideas, and to help shape knowledge and scientific achievements by bridging complementary disciplines into an interactive and attractive forum under the special theme of the conference that is Systems Medicine for the Delivery of Better Healthcare Services. The programme consists of some 290 invited and submitted papers on new developments around the Conference theme, presented in 3 plenary sessions, 29 parallel scientific sessions and 12 special sessions.

The book provides an insight into the advantages and limitations of the use of fractals in biomedical data. It begins with a brief introduction to the concept of fractals and other associated measures and describes applications for biomedical signals and images. Properties of biological data in relations to fractals and entropy, and the association with health and ageing are also covered. The book provides a detailed description of new techniques on physiological signals and images based on the fractal and chaos theory. The aim of this book is to serve as a comprehensive guide for researchers and readers interested in biomedical signal and image processing and feature extraction for disease risk analyses and rehabilitation applications. While it provides the mathematical rigor for those readers interested in such details, it also describes the topic intuitively such that it is suitable for audience who are interested in applying the methods to healthcare and clinical applications. The book is the outcome of years of research by the authors and is comprehensive and includes other reported outcomes.

Cancer is now the most common cause of death in the world. However, because of early diagnosis, better treatment, and advanced life expectancy, many cancer patients frequently live a long, happy, and healthy life after the diagnosis- and often live as long as patients who eventually do not die because of cancer. This book presents newer advances in diagnosis and treatment of specific cancers, an evidence-based and realistic approach to the selection of cancer treatment, and cutting-edge laboratory developments such as the use of the MALDI technique and computational methods that can be used to detect newer protein biomarkers of cancers in diagnosis and to evaluate the success of treatment.