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An approach to segmentation of a solid focal lesion in breast and its peripheral areas in ultrasound images
D.V. Pasynkov 1,2,3, А.А. Kolchev 2, I.A. Egoshin 1,2, I.V. Klioushkin 4, О.О. Pasynkova 1

1 Mari State University, Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation,
424000, Yoshkar-Ola, Russia, Lenin square 1;
2 Kazan (Volga region) Federal University, Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation,
420008, Kazan, Russia, Kremlevskaya St. 18;
3 Kazan State Medical Academy - Branch Campus of the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Further
Professional Education «Russian Medical Academy of Continuous Pro-fessional Education», Ministry of Healthcare
of the Russian Federation, 420012, Kazan, Russia, Butlerova St. 36;
4 Kazan Medical University, Ministry of Health of Russian Federation, 420012, Kazan, Russia, Butlerova St. 49

 PDF, 1838 kB

DOI: 10.18287/2412-6179-CO-1234

Pages: 407-414.

Full text of article: Russian language.

Abstract:
The paper proposes an approach to the segmentation of solid breast lesions and their peripheral areas in ultrasound images. It is noted that identifying the outermost breast lesion structures is an important step for the further lesion classification, directly affecting the final classification of its type. The main feature of the proposed approach is that its implementation takes into account peculiarities of pixel brightness variations in the original image, without using speckle noise filters. The method was tested on a set of ultrasound images of morphologically verified 42 benign and 49 malignant breast lesions marked by a radiologist. The segmentation results were compared with the results of manual marking performed by the radiologist. The average errors in the segmentation of benign and malignant lesion were 5 pixels – for the lesion area and 7 pixels – for the peripheral area, which is insignificant, taking into account the error of manual marking performed by radiologist (3.9 and 4.7 pixels, respectively). The average intersection-over-union (IoU) metrics were 0.82 and 0.80, respectively. The presented results indicate the possibility of using the developed technology in a combination with the system of lesion differentiation.

Keywords:
segmentation, lesion contouring, ultrasound image, image processing.

Citation:
Pasynkov DV, Kolchev AA, Egoshin IA, Klioushkin IV, Pasynkova OO. An approach to segmentation of a solid focal lesion in breast and its peripheral areas in ultrasound images. Computer Optics 2023; 47(3): 407-414. DOI: 10.18287/2412-6179-CO-1234.

Acknowledgements:
The main results of sections "Materials and methods" and "Results" were obtained by D.V. Pasynkov and I.A. Egoshin with funding from a grant of the Russian Science Foundation (Project 22-71-10070, https://rscf.ru/en/project/22-71-10070/). The authors are grateful to the Kazan Federal University Strategic Academic Leadership Program (PRIORITY-2030) for granting the technical feasibility of using the hardware and software.

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