Abstract: |
In breast cancer field, radiologist and researchers aim to discriminate
between masses due to benign breast diseases and tumors due to breast cancer.
In general, benign masses have circumscribed contours, whereas, malignant tumors
appear with spiculated and irregular boundaries. Recently, we proposed an
original mass description based on three morphological mass descriptors, which
are SPICULation (SPICUL), Contour Derivative Variation (CDV) and Skeleton
End Points (SEP). In this paper, we detail an empirical mass evaluation based on
these morphological descriptors which intend to distinguish between malignant
and benign lesions. This evaluation is, first, assured by following descriptors evolution
in two independent data sets: Alberta and MIAS. Secondly, for these two
data sets, the Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analysis is applied. A
comparison between the classic use of Area and Perimeter descriptors only, and
a combination with our three original evaluated descriptors is done. Obtained results
prove that classification accuracy of the combination descriptors including:
SPICUL, SEP and CDV outperforms that of the classic descriptors. Indeed, our
original mass description provide the best Area under ROC Az = 0:986. Therefore,
we affirm that our three original descriptors can serve as good shape descriptors
for the benign-versus-malignant classification of breast masses in mammograms. |