A Preprocessing Method for Reducing Search Area for Architectural Distortion in Mammographic Images

Architectural distortion, the third symptom of breast cancer, is considered as the most commonly missed abnormality. The purpose of this work is to detect suspicious regions of interest including spiculation, retraction and distortion in mammograms. Approximately circular homogeneous areas were detected using a high pass isotropic filter. Selected contours were detected from the filtered image to identify suspicious regions. The algorithm was tested on images from the Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) database as well as 11 mammographic images from a representative set of Indian populace provided by Lakeshore Hospital Kochi, India. The results from the experimental analysis were compared with the information from the radiologist and show the promising scope of the proposed algorithm. The selected regions assist radiologists in analyzing the region with great accuracy.