Segmentation of the pectoral muscle edge on mammograms by tunable parametric edge detection

Mammograms are used to screen for breast cancer and computerized analysis of these images can aid radiologists in detecting the disease. Any computerized method to analyze digitized mammograms must first partition the image into its visually and anatomically distinct regions. The pectoral muscle appears on mediolateral oblique views of mammograms and needs to be identified and segmented out before further analysis. This paper presents an algorithm for segmenting the edge of the pectoral muscle. A modification of the conventional edge detection paradigm gives rise to families of tunable parametric edge detectors, one of which has been used to extract the pectoral edge simply, controllably and reliably from mammograms.