Use of CAD output to guide the intelligent display of digital mammograms

摘要

For digital mammography to be efficient, methods are needed to choose an initial default image presentation that maximizes the amount of relevant information perceived by the radiologist and minimizes the amount of time spent adjusting the image display parameters. The purpose of this work is to explore the possibility of using the output of computer aided detection (CAD) software to guide image enhancement and presentation. A set of 16 digital mammograms with lesions of known pathology was used to develop and evaluate an enhancement and display protocol to improve the initial softcopy presentation of digital mammograms. Lesions were identified by CAD and the DICOM structured report produced by the CAD program was used to determine what enhancement algorithm should be applied in the identified regions of the image. An improved version of contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) is used to enhance calcifications. For masses, the image is first smoothed using a non-linear diffusion technique; subsequently, local contrast is enhanced with a method based on morphological operators. A non-linear lookup table is automatically created to optimize the contrast in the regions of interest (detected lesions) without losing the context of the periphery of the breast. The effectiveness of the enhancement will be compared with the default presentation of the images using a forced choice preference study.