Enhanced algorithms for lesion detection and recognition in ultrasound breast images

Mammography is the gold standard for breast cancer detection. However, it has very high false positive rates and is based on ionizing radiation. This has led to interest in using multi-modal approaches. One modality is diagnostic ultrasound, which is based on non-ionizing radiation and picks up many of the cancers that are generally missed by mammography. However, the presence of speckle noise in ultrasound images has a negative effect on image interpretation. Noise reduction, inconsistencies in capture and segmentation of lesions still remain challenging open research problems in ultrasound images. The target of the proposed research is to enhance the state-of-art computer vision algorithms used in ultrasound imaging and to investigate the role of computer processed images in human diagnostic performance. [Continues.]