Automatic microcalcifications segmentation procedure based on Otsu´s method and morphological filters

Microcalcifications are present in a great number of malignant lesions, being considered as a significant sign of malignancy. However, they are detected in less than 50% of mammograms with carcinomas. Given this scenario, systems to highlight infra-clinic lesions, aiding the specialists to make diagnostics, have been studied. These Computer-aided diagnosis systems have been developed based on parameters extracted from microcalcifications. They are basically composed of three parts: segmentation, parameters calculation and lesions classification. This paper presents an automatic microcalcification segmentation method, based on Otsu´s method and morphological filters. The proposed method was assessed with 236 regions of interest, captured from 54 images (300 dpi, 8 bits). Based on the joint opinion of two experienced radiologists, the algorithm adequately segmented at least 88.6% of the cases.