Texture analysis of mammograms using the two-dimensional Hurst operator

A new texture operator; the two-dimensional Hurst operator, H, is introduced in this paper. It is the two-dimensional extrapolation of an operator originally devised by H.E. Hurst (1951) to analyze time-series. If an image is visualized as a three-dimensional relief map, and the intensity taken to be the height above an x-y plane, this texture operator is useful in determining the relative jaggedness of different image regions. Initial results with mammograms reveal that this operator can discriminate between the predominantly smooth “fatty” and relatively rougher “fibroglandular” regions on mammograms, and has the potential for lesion detection