Detection of microcalcification clusters using neural networks

One of the earliest mammographic signs of breast cancer, a cluster of microcalcifications, is difficult to detect visually, due to the small size of microcalcifications and their resemblance to other bright structures in mammograms. A fully automated algorithm that we developed for detecting clusters of microcalcifications extracts features that represent individual microstructures using the contour map of the mammogram. This allows computations without using predetermined areas of interest (kernels). The extracted features quantify visual recognition criteria. Microcalcifications are discriminated from other microstructures using multi-layer feedforward neural networks whose inputs are the extracted features