A Single Sided Edge Marking Method for Detecting Pectoral Muscle in Digital Mammograms

Abstract

In the computer-assisted diagnosis of breast cancer, the removal of pectoral muscle from mammograms is very important. In this study, a new method, called Single-Sided Edge Marking (SSEM) technique, is proposed for the identification of the pectoral muscle border from mammograms. 60 mammograms from the INbreast database were used to test the proposed method. The results obtained were compared for False Positive Rate, False Negative Rate, and Sensitivity using the ground truth values pre-determined by radiologists for the same images. Accordingly, it has been shown that the proposed method can detect the pectoral muscle border with an average of 95.6% sensitivity.