Detection of Masses and Architectural Distortions in Digital Breast Tomosynthesis Images using Fuzzy and a Contrario Approaches
Résumé
Digital breast tomosynthesis(DBT) is a new 3D imaging technique, which overcomes some limitations of
traditional digital mammography. Its development induces an increased amount of data to be processed,
thus calling for a computer aided detection system to help the radiologist. Towards this aim, this paper
focuses on the detection of masses and architectural distortions in DBT images. A complete detection
scheme is proposed, consisting of two parts, called channels, each dedicated to one type of lesions, which
are then merged in a final decision step, thus handling correctly the potential overlap between the two
types of lesions. The first detection channel exploits the dense kernel nature of masses and the intrinsic
imprecision of their attributes in a fuzzy approach. The second detection channel models the
convergence characteristics of architectural distortions in an a contrario approach. The experimental
results on 101 breasts, including 53 lesions, demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach, which
leads to a high sensitivity with a reduced number of false positives, and compares favorably to existing
approaches.