Skip to main content
Log in

Classification of Benign and Malignant Breast Masses Based on Shape and Texture Features in Sonography Images

  • ORIGINAL PAPER
  • Published:
Save article
View saved research
Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The purpose of this research was evaluating novel shape and texture feature’ efficiency in classification of benign and malignant breast masses in sonography images. First, mass regions were extracted from the region of interest (ROI) sub-image by implementing a new hybrid segmentation approach based on level set algorithms. Then two left and right side areas of the masses are elicited. After that, six features (Eccentricity_feature, Solidity_feature, DeferenceArea_Hull_Rectangular, DeferenceArea_Mass_Rectangular, Cross-correlation-left and Cross-correlation-right) based on shape, texture and region characteristics of the masses were extracted for further classification. Finally a support vector machine (SVM) classifier was utilized to classify breast masses. The leave-one-case-out protocol was utilized on a database of eighty pathologically-proven breast sonographic images of patients (forty-seven benign cases and thirty-three malignant cases) to evaluate our method. The classification results showed an overall accuracy of 95.00%, sensitivity of 90.91%, specificity of 97.87%, positive predictive value of 96.77%, negative predictive value of 93.88%, and Matthew’s correlation coefficient of 89.71%. The experimental results declare that our proposed method is actually a beneficial tool for the diagnosis of the breast cancer and can provide a second opinion for a physician’s decision or can be used for the medicine training especially when coupled with other modalities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+
from $39.99 /Month
  • Starting from 10 chapters or articles per month
  • Access and download chapters and articles from more than 300k books and 2,500 journals
  • Cancel anytime
View plans

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bothorel, S., Meunier, B. B., and Muller, S. A., Fuzzy logic based approach for semilogical analysis of microcalcification in mammographic images. Intell. Syst. 12:819–848, 1997.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Junior, G. B., Paiva, A. C., Silva, A. C., and Muniz de Oliveira, A. C., Classification of breast tissues using Moran’s index and Geary’s coefficient as texture signatures and SVM. Comput. Biol. Med. 39:1063–1072, 2009.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Joo, S., Yang, Y. S., Moon, W. K., et al., Computer- aided diagnosis of solid breast nodules: Use of an artificial neural network based on multiple sonographic features. IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging 23:1292–1300, 2004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bassett, L. W., Liu, T. H., Giuliano, A. E., et al., The prevalence of carcinoma in palpable vs. impalpable, mammographically detected lesions. AJR. 157:21–24, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Chen, D. R., Chang, R. F., Kuo, W. J., et al., Diagnosis of breast tumors with sonographic texture analysis using wavelet transform and neural networks. Ultrasound Med. Biol. 28:1301–1310, 2002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Chang, R. F., Wu, W. J., Moon, W. K., et al., Support vector machines for diagnosis of breast tumors on US images. Acad. Radiol. 10:189–197, 2003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Chang, R. F., Wu, W. J., Moon, W. K., et al., Automatic ultrasound segmentation and morphology based diagnosis of solid breast tumors. Breast Cancer Res. Treat. 89:179–185, 2005.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Kuo, W. J., Chang, R. F., Moon, W. K., et al., Computer-aided diagnosis of breast tumors with different US systems. Acad. Radiol. 9:793–799, 2002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Kuo, W. J., Chang, R. F., Cheng, C. L., et al., Retrieval technique for the diagnosis of solid breast tumors on sonogram. Ultrasound Med. Biol. 28:903–909, 2002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Chen, C. M., Chou, Y. H., Han, K. C., et al., Breast lesions on sonograms: Computer-aided diagnosis with nearly setting-independent features and artificial neural networks. Radiology 226(2):504–514, 2003.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Chen, D. R., Chang, R. F., and Huang, Y. L., Breast cancer diagnosis using self-organizing map for sonography. Ultrasound Med. Biol. 26:405–411, 2000.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Chen, D. R., Chang, R. F., Huang, Y. L., et al., Texture analysis of breast tumors on sonograms. Semin. Ultrasound CT MRI 21:308–316, 2000.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Horsch, K., Giger, M. L., Venta, L. A., and Vyborny, C. J., Computerized diagnosis of breast lesions on ultrasound. Med. Phys. 29:157–164, 2002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Mogatadakala, K., Donohue, K., Piccoli, C., and Forsberg, F., Detection of breast lesion regions in ultrasound images using wavelets and order statistics. Med. Phys. 33(4):840–849, 2006.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Shankar, P., Piccoli, C., Reid, J., Forsberg, J., and Goldberg, B., Application of the compound probability density function for characterization of breast masses in ultrasound B scans. Phys. Med. Biol. 50(10):2241–2248, 2005.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Behnam, H., Zakeri, F. S., and Ahmadinejad, N., Breast mass classification on sonographic images on the basis of shape analysis. J. Med. Ultrason. 37(4):181–186, 2010.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Liua, B., Cheng, H. D., Huang, J., Tian, J., Tang, X., and Liu, J., Fully automatic and segmentation-robust classification of breast tumors based on local texture analysis of ultrasound images. Pattern Recognit. 43:280–298, 2010.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Shi, X. Mass detection and classification in breast ultrasound images. Thesis of doctorate degree in computer science. Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 2006.

  19. Chen, S., Cheung, Y., Su, C., Chen, M., Hwang, T., and Hsueh, S., Analysis of sonographic features for the differentiation of benign and malignant breast tumors of different sizes. Ultrasound Med. Biol. 23(2):188–193, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Tian, J. W., Sun, L. T., Guo, Y. H., Cheng, H. D., and Zhang, Y. T., Computerized-aid diagnosis of breast mass using ultrasound image. Med. Phys. 34:3158–3164, 2007.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Segyeong, J., Yoon, S. Y., Woo, K. M., and Hee, C. K., Computer-aided diagnosis of solid breast nodules: Use of an artificial neural network based on multiple sonographic features. IEEE Trans. Med. Imag. 23(10):1292–1300, 2004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Cho, N., Moon, W., Cha, J., Kim, S., Han, B., Kim, E., Kim, M., Chung, S., Choi, H., and Im, J., Differentiating benign from malignant solid breast masses: Comparison of two-dimensional and three-dimensional US. Radiology 240(1):26–32, 2006.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Wei, L., Yang, Y., and Nishikawa, R. M., Microcalcification classification assisted by content-based image retrieval for breast cancer diagnosis. Pattern Recognit. 42:1126–1132, 2009.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Domínguez, A. R., and Nandi, A. K., Toward breast cancer diagnosis based on automated segmentation of masses in mammograms. Pattern Recognit. 42:1138–1148, 2009.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Paragios, N., Mellina-Gottardo, O., and Ramesh, V., Gradient vector flow fast geometric active contours. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 26:402–407, 2004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Corsi, C., Saracino, G., Sarti, A., and Lamberti, C., Left ventricular volume estimation for real-time three-dimensional echocardiography. IEEE Trans. Med. Imag. 21:1202–1208, 2002.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Yu, H., A 3D multi view freehand ultrasound reconstruction system using volumetric registration and geometric level let segmentation. Thesis for Doctorate, University of New Mexico, December, 2006.

  28. Zakeri, F. S., Behnam, H., and Ahmadinejad, N., Breast mass diagnosis in sonographic images by using features based on mass contour and shape. 17th Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering, Tehran, Iran, 2009.

  29. Li, B., and Acton, S. T., Active contour external force using vector field convolution for image segmentation. IEEE Trans. Image Process. 16:2096–2106, 2007.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  30. Cheng, H. D., Shan, J., Ju, W., Guo, Y., and Zhang, L., Automated breast cancer detection and classification using ultrasound images: A survey. Pattern Recognit. 43:299–317, 2010.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  31. Subashini, T. S., Ramalingam, V., and Palanivel, S., Automated assessment of breast tissue density in digital mammograms. Comput. Vis. Image Underst. 114:33–43, 2010.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Vapnik, V., Statistical learning theory. Wiley: New York, 1998.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  33. Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R., and Friedman, J., The elements of statistical learning. Data mining, inference, and prediction. Springer- Verlag: Berlin, 2001.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hamid Behnam.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Zakeri, F.S., Behnam, H. & Ahmadinejad, N. Classification of Benign and Malignant Breast Masses Based on Shape and Texture Features in Sonography Images. J Med Syst 36, 1621–1627 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-010-9624-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-010-9624-7

Keywords

Profiles

  1. Hamid Behnam