Automatic breast region extraction from digital mammograms for PACS and telemammography applications

High spatial resolution results in very large digital mammogram file sizes. For telemammography, and picture archiving and communication systems, the large file issue introduces technical difficulties in image transmission, s torage, and display. We propose extracting the breast region from the mammo gram to reduce the image fire size. The challenge is on how to faithfully e xtract breast regions from digital mammograms generated from different type s of acquisition systems that contain various imaged compositions. We repor t an algorithm to automatically identify the orientation of breast region a nd extract the breast region from mammograms. Breast regions extracted from full-field digital mammograms reduce file sizes by three to five folds. (C ) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.