title: Size-adapted microcalcification segmentation in mammography utilizing scale-space signatures.
abstract: The purpose of this study is size-adapted segmentation of individual microcalcifications in mammography, based on microcalcification scale-space signature estimation, enabling robust scale selection for initialization of multiscale active contours. Segmentation accuracy was evaluated by the area overlap measure, by comparing the proposed method and two recently proposed ones to expert manual delineations. The method achieved area overlap of 0.61+/-0.15 outperforming statistically (p<0.001) the other two methods (0.53+/-0.18, 0.42+/-0.16). Only the proposed method performed equally for both small (< 460 microm) and large (>/= 460 microm) microcalcifications. Results indicate an accurate method, which could be utilized in computer-aided diagnosis schemes of microcalcification clusters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, University of Patras, 265 00 Patras, Greece.
authors.forename: Nikolaos S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Arikidis
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Karahaliou
authors.forename: Spyros
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Skiadopoulos
authors.forename: Panayiotis
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Korfiatis
authors.forename: Eleni
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Likaki
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Panayiotakis
authors.forename: Lena
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Costaridou
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D002114:Calcinosis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008327:Mammography; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*