© IC-EpsMsO DEVELOPMENT OF A REMOTELY ACCOMPLISHED EDGE – DETECTION ALGORITHM ON BREAST ULTRASOUND

Abstract

The development of an edge detection algorithm, accomplished remotely, utilizing a server and a client in a local network Material and Methods: 150 breast ultrasound (US) images, depicting various aspects of breast lesions, were captured employing a HDI-3000 ATL digital US system with 512x512x8 image resolution. The basic configuration comprised a client and a server. Image processing was distributed, both to the client and the server; the client pre-processed images in order to enhance the lesion boundary, while the server delineated the lesion boundary. Client-side processing involved: (i) median filtering, (ii) adaptive three-level wavelet-based soft-thresholding for de-speckling, and (iii) image histogram thresholding for lesion boundary enhancement. Server-side processing comprised dynamic contour processing for accurate lesion boundary detection. Results (boundary points) were sent back to the client, were superimposed on the original image, and were compared with the free-hand selection performed by the physician (N.D.). Results: Agreement between lesion boundaries selected by the physician and boundaries determined by the proposed algorithm was 92%. Overall processing time was less than 3s (including transfer time from Client to Server and vise-versa), requiring only minimum operator intervention. Conclusion: The proposed edge detection algorithm is fast an