Classification of abnormalities in mammograms by new asymmetric fractal features

In this paper we use fractal method for detection and diagnosis of abnormalities in mammograms. We have used 168 images that were carefully selected by a radiologist and their abnormalities were also confirmed by biopsy. These images included asymmetric lesions, architectural distortion, normal tissue and mass lesion where in case of mass lesion they included circumscribed benign, ill-defined and spiculated malignant masses. At first, by using wavelet transform and piecewise linear coefficient mapping, image enhancement were done. Secondly detection of lesions was done by fractal method as a ROI. Since in investigation of breast cancer, it is important that fibroglandular tissues in both breasts be symmetric and for each asymmetric density, evaluation for malignancy is necessary, we define new fractal features based on extracting asymmetric information from lesions. The fractal features were evaluated on 5 data sets using SVM classifier which enabled to achieve high accuracy in classification of mammograms and diagnostic results. We have also investigated the performance of image enhancement in classification of each data set which shows different effects of enhancement on different lesion types.