Development of Breast Ultrasound CAD System for Screening

Mass screening of breast cancer utilizing mammography (MMG) has been widely carried out. However, MMG might not be able to depict small impalpable masses in dense breast tissue clearly. We have developed a computer-aided detection (CAD) scheme in whole breast ultrasound (US) system for mass screening which has been developed by ALOKA CO., LTD., Japan. Our CAD scheme and image processing techniques have the following three benefits. Indication of mass candidates by our CAD scheme. Visualization of breast US images in two views of B-planes (CC View and ML View) and C-plane. Comparison of left and right breast images as in MMG. The performance of the CAD scheme in detecting malignant masses on an initial study has a true positive fraction of 0.91 (10/11) at a 0.69 (633/924) false positive per image. Although mass screening utilizing US was not appropriate because images acquired by conventional hand probe were poor in reproduction, the problem could be solved in our system.