Enhancing Detection of Microcalcifications using FADHECAL for Early Stage Breast Cancer

Microcalcifications (MCCs) are reliable early signs of breast cancer. However, the small size of calcifications and low radiation factors used in digital mammograms cause low and poor quality mammogram images in detecting MCCs. This paper presents an image enhancement technique called Fuzzy Anisotropic Diffusion Histogram Equalization Contrast Adaptive Limited (FADHECAL) to enhance the details of MCCs in mammogram images by reducing the image noise while conserving contrast and brightness. A total of 23 mammogram images with MCCs were retrieved from the Mammographic Image Analysis Society's database. The enhancement performance of FADHECAL was compared with Recursive Mean-Separate Histogram Equalization, Histogram Equalization and Fuzzy Clipped Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization. Image quality measurement tools of absolute mean brightness error (AMBE), structural similarity index measure (SSIM) and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) were used. The results showed that FADHECAL had the most superior results among other enhancement techniques, with 6.302 of AMBE, 20.453 of PSNR and 0.851 of SSIM. The proposed FADHECAL exhibited a high accuracy of 91.30% for the detection of MCCs. Hence, FADHECAL can be used as an ideal tool for identifying MCCs in early-stage breast cancer.