Bilateral Symmetry-Based Abnormality Detection in Breast Thermograms Using Textural Features of Hot Regions

With an increase in the number of breast cancer cases worldwide, there is an urgent need to develop techniques for early abnormality detection. Thermography is known for its potential to detect breast abnormalities at an early stage. A novel threshold-based non-machine learning asymmetry analysis us...

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Main Authors: Ankita Dey, Ebrahim Ali, Sreeraman Rajan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2023-01-01
Series:IEEE Open Journal of Instrumentation and Measurement
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10210667/
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author Ankita Dey
Ebrahim Ali
Sreeraman Rajan
author_facet Ankita Dey
Ebrahim Ali
Sreeraman Rajan
author_sort Ankita Dey
collection DOAJ
description With an increase in the number of breast cancer cases worldwide, there is an urgent need to develop techniques for early abnormality detection. Thermography is known for its potential to detect breast abnormalities at an early stage. A novel threshold-based non-machine learning asymmetry analysis using textural features is proposed for breast abnormality detection. Breast abnormalities are indicated by regions of elevated temperatures (hot regions), usually, indicated by red color in thermograms. In this work, the breast thermograms are segmented to extract breast tissue profiles and then the red-plane of an RGB thermogram is utilized to analyze the natural contralateral symmetry between the left and right breast of an individual. A novel textural feature based on histogram similarity along with known textural features, such as fractal dimension, hurst exponent, spectral norm, and Frobenius norm, are used as features for asymmetry analysis. Bilateral ratios (BRs) of these features indicate contralateral symmetry between the left and right breast. A BR value closer to 1 indicates such symmetry. Hard voting is done among all the BRs of the textural features to estimate asymmetry between the left and right breast and detect an individual with breast abnormality. The proposed methodology is evaluated on publicly available datasets. It outperforms the state-of-the-art and achieves an accuracy of 96.08%, sensitivity of 100%, and specificity of 93.57%. A comparative analysis of statistical and textural features has also been demonstrated. A novel singular value decomposition (SVD)-based abnormal breast detection technique has been proposed with evaluations on a limited dataset.
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spelling doaj.art-865a32665aea4eddb13ba19346e41f332024-04-22T20:23:43ZengIEEEIEEE Open Journal of Instrumentation and Measurement2768-72362023-01-01211410.1109/OJIM.2023.330290810210667Bilateral Symmetry-Based Abnormality Detection in Breast Thermograms Using Textural Features of Hot RegionsAnkita Dey0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5201-1081Ebrahim Ali1https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9845-6578Sreeraman Rajan2https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0153-6723Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, CanadaDepartment of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, CanadaDepartment of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, CanadaWith an increase in the number of breast cancer cases worldwide, there is an urgent need to develop techniques for early abnormality detection. Thermography is known for its potential to detect breast abnormalities at an early stage. A novel threshold-based non-machine learning asymmetry analysis using textural features is proposed for breast abnormality detection. Breast abnormalities are indicated by regions of elevated temperatures (hot regions), usually, indicated by red color in thermograms. In this work, the breast thermograms are segmented to extract breast tissue profiles and then the red-plane of an RGB thermogram is utilized to analyze the natural contralateral symmetry between the left and right breast of an individual. A novel textural feature based on histogram similarity along with known textural features, such as fractal dimension, hurst exponent, spectral norm, and Frobenius norm, are used as features for asymmetry analysis. Bilateral ratios (BRs) of these features indicate contralateral symmetry between the left and right breast. A BR value closer to 1 indicates such symmetry. Hard voting is done among all the BRs of the textural features to estimate asymmetry between the left and right breast and detect an individual with breast abnormality. The proposed methodology is evaluated on publicly available datasets. It outperforms the state-of-the-art and achieves an accuracy of 96.08%, sensitivity of 100%, and specificity of 93.57%. A comparative analysis of statistical and textural features has also been demonstrated. A novel singular value decomposition (SVD)-based abnormal breast detection technique has been proposed with evaluations on a limited dataset.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10210667/Bilateral symmetrybreast cancerred-planestatistical analysistextural analysisthermograms
spellingShingle Ankita Dey
Ebrahim Ali
Sreeraman Rajan
Bilateral Symmetry-Based Abnormality Detection in Breast Thermograms Using Textural Features of Hot Regions
IEEE Open Journal of Instrumentation and Measurement
Bilateral symmetry
breast cancer
red-plane
statistical analysis
textural analysis
thermograms
title Bilateral Symmetry-Based Abnormality Detection in Breast Thermograms Using Textural Features of Hot Regions
title_full Bilateral Symmetry-Based Abnormality Detection in Breast Thermograms Using Textural Features of Hot Regions
title_fullStr Bilateral Symmetry-Based Abnormality Detection in Breast Thermograms Using Textural Features of Hot Regions
title_full_unstemmed Bilateral Symmetry-Based Abnormality Detection in Breast Thermograms Using Textural Features of Hot Regions
title_short Bilateral Symmetry-Based Abnormality Detection in Breast Thermograms Using Textural Features of Hot Regions
title_sort bilateral symmetry based abnormality detection in breast thermograms using textural features of hot regions
topic Bilateral symmetry
breast cancer
red-plane
statistical analysis
textural analysis
thermograms
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10210667/
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AT ebrahimali bilateralsymmetrybasedabnormalitydetectioninbreastthermogramsusingtexturalfeaturesofhotregions
AT sreeramanrajan bilateralsymmetrybasedabnormalitydetectioninbreastthermogramsusingtexturalfeaturesofhotregions