Development of advanced computer methods for breast cancer image interpretation through texture and temporal evolution analysis

Identifier:  TDX:2283

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX2283

Authors:  AbdelNasser Mohamed Mahmoud, Mohamed

Abstract:
Breast cancer is one of the most dangerous diseases that attacks women. Computer-aided diagnosis systems may help to detect breast cancer early and reduce mortality. This thesis proposes several methods for analyzing breast cancer images. We analyze breast cancer in mammographies, ultrasonographies and thermographies. Our analysis includes mass/normal breast tissue classification, benign/malignant tumor classification in mammograms and ultrasound images, nipple detection in thermograms, mammogram registration and analysis of the evolution of breast tumors. We considered well-known texture analysis methods and proposed two new texture descriptors. We also studied the effect of pixel resolution, integration scale, preprocessing and feature normalization on the performance of these texture analysis methods for tumor classification. Finally, we used super-resolution approaches to improve the performance of texture analysis methods when classifying breast tumors in ultrasound images. For the analysis of breast cancer in thermograms, we propose an automatic method for detecting nipples that is accurate and simple. To analyze the evolution of breast cancer, we propose a temporal mammogram registration method based on curvilinear coordinates. We also propose a method for quantifying and visualizing the evolution of breast tumors in patients undergoing medical treatment. Overall, the methods proposed in this thesis improve the performance of the state-of-the-art approaches and may help to improve the diagnosis of breast cancer.