"Hippocrates-mst": a prototype for computer-aided microcalcification analysis and risk assessment for breast cancer

One of the most common cancer types among women is breast cancer. Regular mammographic examinations increase the possibility for early diagnosis and treatment and significantly improve the chance of survival for patients with breast cancer. Clustered microcalcifications have been considered as important indicators of the presence of breast cancer. We present "Hippocrates-mst", a prototype system for computer-aided risk assessment of breast cancer. Our research has been focused in developing software to locate microcalcifications on X-ray mammography images, quantify their critical features and classify them according to their probability of being cancerous. A total of 260 cases (187 benign and 73 malignant) have been examined and the performance of the prototype is presented through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The system is showing high levels of sensitivity identifying correctly 98.63% of malignant cases.