FINGER TRACKING FOR BREAST PALPATION QUANTIFICATION USING COLOR IMAGEFEATURES

A vision-based finger motion tracking approach is presented to gather quantitative data about breast palpation for cancer detection, such as finger positions, search pattern and coverage area, and this approach is used to develop a prototype palpation training system. Special col or markers are used as features of interest because in breast palpatio n the background of the image is the breast itself which is similar to the fingers in color. This color similarity can hinder the ability or efficiency of other feature extraction methods if real-time performan ce is required, To simplify the feature extraction process, color spac e transform is utilized instead of directly using the original RGB val ues of the image. Although the clinical environment will be well illum inated, normalization of color attributes is applied to compensate for minor changes in illumination. A neighbor search is employed to ensur e real-time performance, and a three-finger pattern topology is checke d for the extracted features to avoid any possible false features, Aft er detecting the features in the images, 3-D positions of the color ma rked fingers are calculated using the stereo vision principle. Experim ental results with the prototype training system are given to show the performance and effectiveness of the proposed approach. This approach is expected to significantly improve the training quality of breast p alpation, thus increasing the detection rate and accuracy of breast ca ncer. (C) 1997 Society of Photo-Optical lnstrumentation Engineers.