Snakules: Snakes that seek spicules on mammography

We present a new method called “snakules” for the annotation of spicules on mammography. Snakules employs parametric open-ended snakes that are deployed in a region around a suspect spiculated mass location that has been identified by a radiologist or a computer-aided detection (CADe) algorithm. The set of convergent snakules deform, grow and adapt to the true spicules in the image, by an attractive process of curve evolution and motion that optimizes the local matching energy. Our results from an initial observer study involving an experienced radiologist demonstrate the strong potential of the method as an image analysis technique to improve the specificity of CADe algorithms.