Breast tumor classification in ultrasound images using support vector machines and neural networks

Introduction: The use of tools for computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) has been proposed for detection and classification of breast cancer. Concerning breast cancer image diagnosing with ultrasound, some results found in literature show that morphological features perform better than texture features for lesions differentiation, and indicate that a reduced set of features performs better than a larger one. Methods: This study evaluated the performance of support vector machines (SVM) with different kernels combinations, and neural networks with different stop criteria, for classifying breast cancer nodules. Twenty-two morphological features from the contour of 100 BUS images were used as input for classifiers and then a scalar feature selection technique with correlation was used to reduce the features dataset. Results: The best results obtained for accuracy and area under ROC curve were 96.98% and 0.980, respectively, both with neural networks using the whole set of features. Conclusion: The performance obtained with neural networks with the selected stop criterion was better than the ones obtained with SVM. Whilst using neural networks the results were better with all 22 features, SVM classifiers performed better with a reduced set of 6 features. © 2016, Sociedade Brasileira de Engenharia Biomedica. All rights reserved.