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A new conditional region growing approach for microcalcification delineation in mammograms

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Abstract

Microcalcifications (MCs) are considered as the first indicator of breast cancer development. Their morphology, in terms of shape and size, is considered as the most important criterion that determines their malignity degrees. Therefore, the accurate delineation of MC is a cornerstone step in their automatic diagnosis process. In this paper, we propose a new conditional region growing (CRG) approach with the ability of finding the accurate MC boundaries starting from selected seed points. The starting seed points are determined based on regional maxima detection and superpixel analysis. The region growing step is controlled by a set of criteria that are adapted to MC detection in terms of contrast and shape variation. These criteria are derived from prior knowledge to characterize MCs and can be divided into two categories. The first one concerns the neighbourhood searching size. The second one deals with the analysis of gradient information and shape evolution within the growing process. In order to prove the effectiveness and the reliability in terms of MC detection and delineation, several experiments have been carried out on MCs of various types, with both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The comparison of the proposed approach with state-of-the art proves the importance of the used criteria in the context of MC delineation, towards a better management of breast cancer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Sousse, LATIS-Laboratory of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Systems, Université de Sousse, 4023, Sousse, Tunisia

    Asma Touil, Karim Kalti & Mohamed Ali Mahjoub

  2. Université de Sousse, Institut Supérieur d’Informatique et des Techniques de Communication, 4011, Hammam Sousse, Tunisia

    Asma Touil

  3. IMT Atlantique, LaTIM UMR 1101, UBL, Brest, 29200, France

    Asma Touil, Pierre-Henri Conze & Basel Solaiman

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  1. Asma Touil
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  2. Karim Kalti
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  5. Mohamed Ali Mahjoub
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Correspondence to Asma Touil.

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Touil, A., Kalti, K., Conze, PH. et al. A new conditional region growing approach for microcalcification delineation in mammograms. Med Biol Eng Comput 59, 1795–1814 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-021-02379-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-021-02379-x

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