Continuous wavelet transform is employed to detect singularities in 2-D signals by tracking modulus maxima along maxima lines and particularly applied to microcalcification detection in mammograms. The microcalcifications are modeled as smoothed positive impulse functions. Other target property detection can be performed by adjusting its mathematical model. In this application, the general modulus maximum and its scale of each singular point are detected and statistically analyzed locally in its neighborhood. The diagnosed microcalcification cluster results are compared with health tissue results, showing that general modulus maxima can serve as a suspicious spot detection tool with the detection performance no significantly sensitive to the breast tissue background properties. Performed fractal analysis of selected singularities supports the statistical findings. It is important to select the suitable computation parameters-thresholds of magnitude, argument and frequency range-in accordance to mathematical description of the target property as well as spatial and numerical resolution of the analyzed signal. The tests are performed on a set of images with empirically selected parameters for 200 μm/pixel spatial and 8 bits/pixel numerical resolution, appropriate for detection of the suspicious spots in a mammogram. The results show that the magnitude of a singularity general maximum can play a significant role in the detection of microcalcification, while zooming into a cluster in image finer spatial resolution both magnitude of general maximum and the spatial distribution of the selected set of singularities may lead to the breast abnormality characterization.
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