Quantification of vascular calcifications on digitized mammograms

Abstract

In this paper, it's presented an automatic quantification computer algorithm of breast arterial calcifications in digital mammograms, using image processing techniques, to be used as a quantitative cardiovascular risk or diabetes indicator for women. The proposed image processing algorithm is composed of two main steps: a detection phase, using a combination of the line operator method with edge detection, and a segmentation phase which use a thresholding technique to obtain seeds for a region growing algorithm. Obtained results shows a good agreement with ground truth images of calcified vessels which have been hand-segmented by an experienced radiologist with a high degree of detail and quality . © 2010 Springer-Verlag.