Robust contrast enhancement for microcalcification in mammography

Abstract

Microcalcification is important for early breast cancer detection. But due to the low contrast of microcalcifications and same properties as noise, it is difficult to detect microcalcification. In this paper, we propose a robust contrast enhancement method for microcalcification. The proposed method is modified homomorphic filtering in wavelet domain based on background noise information. By using the proposed method, the mammogram contrast can be stretched adaptively thereby enhancing the contrast. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves the visibility of microcalcifications. The contrast improvement index (CII) is increased while noise standard deviation is decreased.