Bilateral symmetry analysis of breast MRI

Mammographic interpretation often uses symmetry between left and right breasts to indicate the site of potential tumour masses. This approach has not been applied to breast images obtained from MRI. We present an automatic technique for breast symmetry detection based on feature extraction techniques which does not require any efforts to co-register breast MRI data. The approach applies computer-vision techniques to detect natural biological symmetries in breast MR scans based on three objective measures of similarity: multiresolution non-orthogonal wavelet representation, three-dimensional intensity distributions and co-occurrence matrices. Statistical distributions that are invariant to feature localization are computed for each of the extracted image features. These distributions are later compared against each other to account for perceptual similarity. Studies based on 51 normal MRI scans of randomly selected patients showed that the sensitivity of symmetry detection rate approached 94%. The symmetry analysis procedure presented in this paper can be applied as an aid in detecting breast tissue changes arising from disease.