title: Automated quality assessment in three-dimensional breast ultrasound images.
abstract: Automated three-dimensional breast ultrasound (ABUS) is a valuable adjunct to x-ray mammography for breast cancer screening of women with dense breasts. High image quality is essential for proper diagnostics and computer-aided detection. We propose an automated image quality assessment system for ABUS images that detects artifacts at the time of acquisition. Therefore, we study three aspects that can corrupt ABUS images: the nipple position relative to the rest of the breast, the shadow caused by the nipple, and the shape of the breast contour on the image. Image processing and machine learning algorithms are combined to detect these artifacts based on 368 clinical ABUS images that have been rated manually by two experienced clinicians. At a specificity of 0.99, 55% of the images that were rated as low quality are detected by the proposed algorithms. The areas under the ROC curves of the single classifiers are 0.99 for the nipple position, 0.84 for the nipple shadow, and 0.89 for the breast contour shape. The proposed algorithms work fast and reliably, which makes them adequate for online evaluation of image quality during acquisition. The presented concept may be extended to further image modalities and quality aspects.
authors.affiliation: mediri GmbH , Vangerowstr. 18, Heidelberg 69115, Germany.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schwaab
authors.affiliation: Tohoku University , Tokuyama Laboratory, 6-3-09 Aramaki-Aoba Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.
authors.forename: Yago
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Diez
authors.affiliation: University of Girona , Campus Montilivi, Ed. P-IV, Girona 17071, Spain.
authors.forename: Arnau
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Oliver
authors.affiliation: University of Girona , Campus Montilivi, Ed. P-IV, Girona 17071, Spain.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Martí
authors.affiliation: Radboud University Medical Center , Geert Grooteplein Zuid 10, Nijmegen 6525 GA, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: van Zelst
authors.affiliation: Radboud University Medical Center , Geert Grooteplein Zuid 10, Nijmegen 6525 GA, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gubern-Mérida
authors.affiliation: University libre de Bruxelles , Franklin Rooseveltlaan 50, Brussels 1050, Belgium.
authors.forename: Ahmed Bensouda
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Mourri
authors.affiliation: mediri GmbH , Vangerowstr. 18, Heidelberg 69115, Germany.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gregori
authors.affiliation: mediri GmbH, Vangerowstr. 18, Heidelberg 69115, Germany; Fraunhofer MEVIS, Universitätsallee 29, Bremen 28359, Germany.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Günther
keywords: automated breast ultrasound imaging; image processing; image quality; machine learning