Multi-scale morphological feature extraction for the classification of micro-calcifications

Mammography is considered the most appropriate method to defeat breast cancer in population screening. Although mammography is used for the detection of micro-calcifications, the benign/malignant classification relies on subsequent histology assessment. We describe a novel method for the automatic classification of benign and malignant micro-calcifications directly from mammographic images, which uses the morphology as well as the distribution aspects of micro-calcifications and is directly associated with the BIRADS categorization of microcalcifications. The developed approach is building on Iwanowski’s morphology work, but is adding class-extractors and multi-scale aspects. Translation to other application areas is discussed and evaluation based on the MIAS and DDSM datasets show results in line with state of-the-art micro-calcifications classification approaches.