Segmentation Techniques for Breast Cancer Imaging Modalities-A Review

In order to visualize the breast cancer radiologists prefer to use mammogram and breast ultrasound imaging modalities. To detect cancer, a region of interest (ROI) symbolizing tumor is extracted from the image. The segmentation process becomes tedious in presence of noise, low contrast, and blurriness. Pre-processing is done before segmentation to enhance the contrast and to remove the unwanted information from the image. Segmentation also influences the classification of the image into benign and malignant classes. Various segmentation techniques have been proposed in the literature to extract microcalcification region of interest, masses, and breast lesions and to remove the pectoral muscles. This paper provides the detailed review of these techniques, particularly for mammogram images.