Digital mammograms contrast enhancement using wavelets — A comparative study

Mammography is the most used diagnosis method for the breast cancer. The challenge of this exam is to obtain good contrast and resolution with small radiation doses. In recent years, several efforts have been done to improve the detection efficiency of mammograms by using the potential offered by digital image processing. In this work, the potential benefits of applying the wavelet transform for microcalcifications enhancement in the digital mammograms is studied. Several contrast enhancement methods based on wavelets found in literature were adjusted and applied to a digital mammogram dataset. Their performance was evaluated by appropriate quantitative metrics, and the advantages and disadvantages of each them are described in this study. This study represents a good starting point to choose an adequate enhancement method based on wavelet transform for a specific problem.