Computer-aided diagnosis of mammographic masses based on a supervised content-based image retrieval approach

In this work, the incorporation of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) into computer aided diagnosis (CADx) is investigated, in order to contribute to the decision-making process of radiologists in the characterization of mammographic masses. The proposed scheme comprises two stages: A margin-specific supervised CBIR stage that retrieves images from reference cases along with a decision stage that is based on the retrieved items. The feature set utilized exploits state-of-the-art features along with a newly proposed texture descriptor, namely mHOG, targeted to capturing margin and core specific mass properties. Performance evaluation considers the CBIR and diagnosis stages separately and is addressed by using standard measures on an enhanced version of the widely adopted digital database for screening mammography (DDSM). The proposed scheme achieved improved performance of CADx of masses in X-ray mammography experimentally compared to the state-of-the-art.