Segmentation of infrared images: A new technology for early detection of breast diseases

In a first stage a cancer promotes an intense process of vascularization at the affected area increasing blood flow and modifying the local temperature of the body. Using a thermal camera, the infrared radiation emitted by the human body can be captured and then used in the measuring of body temperature, turning the results into an image. Moreover, thermography can detect suspicious regions in patients of any age, even in cases of dense breasts, where the detection of an abnormality cannot be accomplished by others exams. A fundamental step in the use of thermal images is the development of computer aided diagnosis (CAD) systems. These could allow the execution of exams by technicians, following well established routines and protocols, as already occurs in mammography exams, allowing doctors to have a greater possibility of dedication in the analysis and in the meaning of the exams. In this work, an automatic detection of the regions of interest (ROI) is proposed and compared with segmentations performed manually. This work presents a methodology for the automatic segmentation of lateral breast thermal images. For the evaluation of the results, different groups of ground truth are generated, which are available on the internet, in order to allow the verification of the results' correctness. Finally, the obtained results by the proposed methodology for the 328 images used in this work are demonstrated. The results showed average values of accuracy.