APPLICATION OF SHAPE-ANALYSIS TO MAMMOGRAPHIC CALCIFICATIONS

We have developed a set of shape factors to measure the roughness of c ontours of calcifications in mammograms and for use in their classific ation as malignant or benign. The analysis of mammograms is performed in three stages. First, a region growing technique is used to obtain t he contours of calcifications. Then, three measures of shape features, including compactness, moments, and Fourier descriptors are computed for each region. Finally, their applicability for classification is st udied by using the three shape measures to form feature vectors. Class ification of 143 calcifications from 18 biopsy-proven cases as benign or malignant using the three measures with the nearest-neighbor method was 100% accurate.