A Novel Deep Learning Framework for Nipple Segmentation in Digital Mammography

This study introduces a novel methodology to enhance nipple segmentation in digital mammography, a critical component for accurate medical analysis and computer-aided detection systems. The nipple is a key anatomical landmark for multi-view and multi-modality breast image registration, where accurate localization is vital for ensuring image quality and enabling precise registration of anomalies across different mammographic views. The proposed approach significantly outperforms baseline methods, particularly in challenging cases where previous techniques failed. It achieved successful detection across all cases and reached a mean Intersection over Union (mIoU) of 0.63 in instances where the baseline failed entirely. Additionally, it yielded nearly a tenfold improvement in Hausdorff distance and consistent gains in overlap-based metrics, with the mIoU increasing from 0.7408 to 0.8011 in the craniocaudal (CC) view and from 0.7488 to 0.7767 in the mediolateral oblique (MLO) view. Furthermore, its generalizability suggests the potential for application to other breast imaging modalities and related domains facing challenges such as class imbalance and high variability in object characteristics.