Combining multiple feature representations and AdaBoost ensemble learning for reducing false-positive detections in Computer-aided Detection of masses on mammograms

One of the drawbacks of current Computer-aided Detection (CADe) systems is a high number of false-positive (FP) detections, especially for detecting mass abnormalities. In a typical CADe system, classifier design is one of the key steps for determining FP detection rates. This paper presents the effective classifier ensemble system for tackling FP reduction problem in CADe. To construct ensemble consisting of correct classifiers while disagreeing with each other as much as possible, we develop a new ensemble construction solution that combines data resampling underpinning AdaBoost learning with the use of different feature representations. In addition, to cope with the limitation of weak classifiers in conventional AdaBoost, our method has an effective mechanism for tuning the level of weakness of base classifiers. Further, for combining multiple decision outputs of ensemble members, a weighted sum fusion strategy is used to maximize a complementary effect for correct classification. Comparative experiments have been conducted on benchmark mammogram dataset. Results show that the proposed classifier ensemble outperforms the best single classifier in terms of reducing the FP detections of masses.