A fuzzy approach to segmenting the breast region in mammograms

Image segmentation is a key factor in separating specific details of interest from an image. The largest single feature on a mammogram is the skin-air interface, or breast contour. Extraction of the breast contour is useful for a number of reasons. Foremost it allows the search for abnormalities to be limited to the region of the breast without undue influence from the background of the mammogram. Segmentation of the breast-region from the background is made difficult by the tapering nature of the breast, such that the breast contour lies in between the soft-tissue and the non-breast region. Segmentation techniques can be broadly categorized as fuzzy or hard (e.g. thresholding). This paper explores the application of fuzzy segmentation to the problem of extracting the breast region in mammograms. Fuzzy segmentation may be ideally suited to this task as it allows for pixel membership in more than one region.