Towards cost reduction of breast cancer diagnosis using mammography texture analysis

• Published in: Journal of experimental & theoretical artificial intelligence Vol. 28; no. 1-2; pp. 385 - 402
• Main Authors: Abdel-Nasser, Mohamed, Moreno, Antonio, Puig, Domenec
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Taylor & Francis 03.03.2016; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Breast; Breast cancer; Cancer; Classification; Classifiers; Diagnosis; feature combination; Feature extraction; majority voting; Mammography; Medical diagnosis; Surface layer; Texture
• ISSN: 0952-813X; 1362-3079
• DOI: 10.1080/0952813X.2015.1024496

In this paper we analyse the performance of various texture analysis methods for the purpose of reducing the number of false positives in breast cancer detection; as a result, the cost of breast cancer diagnosis would be reduced. We consider well-known methods such as local binary patterns, histogram of oriented gradients, co-occurrence matrix features and Gabor filters. Moreover, we propose the use of local directional number patterns as a new feature extraction method for breast mass detection. For each method, different classifiers are trained on the extracted features to predict the class of unknown instances. In order to improve the mass detection capability of each individual method, we use feature combination techniques and classifier majority voting. Some experiments were performed on the images obtained from a public breast cancer database, achieving promising levels of sensitivity and specificity.