Breast peripheral area correction in digital mammograms

Digital mammograms may present an overexposed area in the peripheral part of the breast, which is visually shown as a darker area with lower contrast. This has a direct impact on image quality and affects image visualisation and assessment. This paper presents an automatic method to enhance the over...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Tortajada Giménez, Meritxell, Oliver i Malagelada, Arnau, Martí Marly, Robert, Ganau, Sergi, Tortajada, Lídia, Sentís, Melcior, Freixenet i Bosch, Jordi, Zwiggelaar, Reyer
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10256/10920
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10256/10920
Access Level:acceso embargado
Palabra clave:Imatges -- Processament
Image processing
Mama -- Radiografia
Breast -- Radiography
Imatges digitals
Digital images
Imatgeria mèdica
Imaging systems in medicine
Descripción
Sumario:Digital mammograms may present an overexposed area in the peripheral part of the breast, which is visually shown as a darker area with lower contrast. This has a direct impact on image quality and affects image visualisation and assessment. This paper presents an automatic method to enhance the overexposed peripheral breast area providing a more homogeneous and improved view of the whole mammogram. The method automatically restores the overexposed area by equalising the image using information from the intensity of non-overexposed neighbour pixels. The correction is based on a multiplicative model and on the computation of the distance map from the breast boundary. A total of 334 digital mammograms were used for evaluation. Mammograms before and after enhancement were evaluated by an expert using visual comparison. In 90.42% of the cases, the enhancement obtained improved visualisation compared to the original image in terms of contrast and detail. Moreover, results show that lesions found in the peripheral area after enhancement presented a more homogeneous intensity distribution. Hence, peripheral enhancement is shown to improve visualisation and will play a role in further development of CAD systems in mammography