The British Journal of Radiology, Vol 73, Issue 868 410-420, Copyright © 2000 by British Institute of Radiology

ARTICLES

A digital density equalization technique to improve visualization of breast periphery in mammography

AP Stefanoyiannis, L Costaridou, P Sakellaropoulos and G Panayiotakis
Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, University of Patras, Greece.

In mammographic imaging, the film area corresponding to the breast periphery is overexposed, resulting in high optical density and degraded contrast in this region. A digital, model-driven density equalization technique was designed and developed to overcome this overexposure problem, taking into account the non-linear characteristic curve of the film-digitizer system. The method is based on several image processing and analysis techniques, such as thresholding, which is used to segment the pixels of the mammogram belonging to the breast region from the background, and wavelet-based fusion, which is used to equalize the pixels of breast periphery selectively while leaving the remaining breast region unaffected. Initial application of the method resulted in density-equalized mammographic images, characterized by improved contrast at the breast periphery.

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