Analysis of clustered microcalcifications by using a single numeric classifier extracted from mammographic digital images

The authors prospectively tested the performance of a single numeric classifier constructed from a discriminative analysis classification system based on automatic computer-extracted quantitative features of clustered microcalcifications.

Mammographically detected clustered microcalcifications in patients who had been referred for biopsy were digitized at 600 dpi with an 8-bit gray scale. A software program was developed to extract features automatically from digitized images to describe the clustered microcalcifications quantitatively. The significance of these features was evaluated by using the Wilcoxon test, the Welch modified two-sample t test, and the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. A discriminant analysis pattern recognition system was constructed to generate a single numeric classifier for each case, based on the extracted features. This system was trained on 137 archival known reference cases and its performance tested on 24 unknown prospective cases. The results were evaluated by using receiver operating characteristic analysis.

Thirty-seven extracted parameters demonstrated a statistically significant difference between the values for the benign and for the malignant lesions. Seven independent factors were selected to construct the classifier and to evaluate the unknown prospective cases. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the prospective cases was 0.88.

A pattern recognition classifier based on quantitative features for clustered microcalcifications at screen-film mammography was found to perform satisfactorily. The software may be of value in the interpretation of mammographically detected microcalcifications.