TOROIDAL GAUSSIAN FILTERS FOR DETECTION AND EXTRACTION OF PROPERTIES OF SPICULATED MASSES

We have invented a new class of linear filters for the detection of spiculated masses and architectural distortions in mammography. We call these Spiculation Filters. These filters are narrow band filters and form a new class of wavelettype filter banks. In this paper, we show that unmodulated versions of these filters can be used to detect the central mass region of spiculated masses. We refer to these as toroidal gaussian filters. We also show that the physical properties of spiculated masses can be extracted from the responses of the toroidal gaussian filters without segmentation. 1