Level Set Detected Masses in Digital Mammograms

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among woman. Currently X-ray mammography is the most widely used method for early detection of breast cancer. Many computer aided techniques are available to assist the radiologist in taking crucial decisions. A method uses level set for segmentation of masses in digital mammograms is introduced. This method uses the Gaussian filter for smoothing the image and noise reduction. Level set methods offer a powerful approach for the medical image segmentation since it can handle any of the cavities, concavities, convolution, splitting or merging. However, this method requires specifying initial curves and can only provide good results if these curves are placed near symmetrically with respect to the object boundary. The results of experimental study indicate that our scheme can provide useful contour extraction for mass structure.