title: Classification of breast masses using selected shape, edge-sharpness, and texture features with linear and kernel-based classifiers.
abstract: Breast masses due to benign disease and malignant tumors related to breast cancer differ in terms of shape, edge-sharpness, and texture characteristics. In this study, we evaluate a set of 22 features including 5 shape factors, 3 edge-sharpness measures, and 14 texture features computed from 111 regions in mammograms, with 46 regions related to malignant tumors and 65 to benign masses. Feature selection is performed by a genetic algorithm based on several criteria, such as alignment of the kernel with the target function, class separability, and normalized distance. Fisher's linear discriminant analysis, the support vector machine (SVM), and our strict two-surface proximal (S2SP) classifier, as well as their corresponding kernel-based nonlinear versions, are used in the classification task with the selected features. The nonlinear classification performance of kernel Fisher's discriminant analysis, SVM, and S2SP, with the Gaussian kernel, reached 0.95 in terms of the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve. The results indicate that improvement in classification accuracy may be gained by using selected combinations of shape, edge-sharpness, and texture features.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, The University of Liverpool, Brownlow Hill, L69 3GJ, Liverpool, UK.
authors.forename: Tingting
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Mu
authors.forename: Asoke K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Nandi
authors.forename: Rangaraj M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Rangayyan
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008327:Mammography; D012372:ROC Curve; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*