Breast Skin-Line Estimation and Breast Segmentation in Mammograms using Fast-Marching Method

Breast skin-line estimation and breast segmentation is an important pre-process in mammogram image processing and computer-aided diagnosis of breast cancer. Limiting the area to be processed into a specific target region in an image would increase the accuracy and efficiency of processing algorithms. In this paper we are presenting a new algorithm for estimating skin-line and breast segmentation using fast marching algorithm. Fast marching is a partial-differential equation based numerical technique to track evolution of interfaces. We have introduced some modifications to the traditional fast marching method, specifically to improve the accuracy of skin-line estimation and breast tissue segmentation. Proposed modifications ensure that the evolving front stops near the desired boundary. We have evaluated the performance of the algorithm by using 100 mammogram images taken from mini-MIAS database. The results obtained from the experimental evaluation indicate that this algorithm explains 98.6% of the ground truth breast region and accuracy of the segmentation is 99.1%. Also this algorithm is capable of partially-extracting nipple when it is available in the profile.

A Scheme of Model Verification of the Concurrent Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) for Image Compression

The scientific community has invested a great deal of effort in the fields of discrete wavelet transform in the last few decades. Discrete wavelet transform (DWT) associated with the vector quantization has been proved to be a very useful tool for the compression of image. However, the DWT is very computationally intensive process requiring innovative and computationally efficient method to obtain the image compression. The concurrent transformation of the image can be an important solution to this problem. This paper proposes a model of concurrent DWT for image compression. Additionally, the formal verification of the model has also been performed. Here the Symbolic Model Verifier (SMV) has been used as the formal verification tool. The system has been modeled in SMV and some properties have been verified formally.