Automatic detection of the nipple in screen-film and full-field digital mammograms using a novel Hessian-based method

Automatic detection of the nipple in mammograms is an important step in computerized systems that combine multiview information for accurate detection and diagnosis of breast cancer. Locating the nipple is a difficult task owing to variations in image quality, presence of noise, and distortion and displacement of the breast tissue due to compression. In this work, we propose a novel Hessian-based method to locate automatically the nipple in screen-film and full-field digital mammograms (FFDMs). The method includes detection of a plausible nipple/retroareolar area in a mammogram using geometrical constraints, analysis of the gradient vector field by mean and Gaussian curvature measurements, and local shape-based conditions. The proposed procedure was tested on 566 mammographic images consisting of 372 randomly selected scanned films from two public databases (mini-MIAS and DDSM), and 194 digital mammograms acquired with a GE Senographe 2000D FFDM system. A radiologist independently marked the centers of the nipples for evaluation of the results. The average error obtained was 6.7 mm (22 pixels) with reference to the center of the nipple as identified by the radiologist. Only two out of the 566 detected nipples (0.35 %) had an error larger than 50 mm. The method was also directly compared with two other techniques for the detection of the nipple. The results indicate that the proposed method outperforms other algorithms presented in the literature and can be used to identify accurately the nipple on various types of mammographic images.