A methodology for evaluation of boundary detection algorithms on breast ultrasound images

Image segmentation is the partition of an image into a set of non-overlapping regions that comprise the entire image. The image is decomposed into meaningful parts, which are uniform with respect to certain characteristics, such as grey level or texture. This study presents a novel methodology to evaluate ultrasound image segmentation algorithms. The sonographic features can differentiate between various sized malignant and benign breast tumours. The clinical experiment can determine whether a tumour is benign or not, based on contour, shape, echogenicity and echo texture. Further study of the standardized sonographic features, especially the tumour contour and shape, will improve the positive predictive value and accuracy rate in breast tumour detection. The effectiveness of using this methodology is illustrated by evaluating image segmentation on breast ultrasound images. Via definite segmentation, the appreciated tumour shape and contour can be ascertained. Furthermore, this method can enhance the ability of ultrasound to distinguish between benign and malignant breast lesions.