Modelling structural deformations in mammographic tissue using the dual-tree complex wavelet

The appearance of breast tissue in mammograms is altered by the presence of a malignant mass Existing synthesis methods have not addressed this structural deformation We aim to use a set of mass background images that display altered breast tissue to simulate such deformations in regions of digital mammograms previously showing no signs of disease Regions are decomposed using the dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT) to obtain a richer representation of local structure than provided by image grey-levels alone Synthesis is achieved by modifying the high-frequency DT-CWT coefficients of normal regions to match those in mass backgrounds Three methods for completing this task are described The results, advantages and current limitations of the methods are discussed.