An indexed atlas of digital mammograms for computer-aided diagnosis of breast cancer

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems are being developed to assist radiologists in the interpretation of ambiguous mammographic features corresponding to possible signs of early breast cancer Databases of digital mammograms are needed for testing such systems; we present an overview of a few such databases. Most databases are limited to single-exam sets of two or four mammograms on which the diagnosis was made, some ground-truth information related to the position of diagnostically significant mammographic features, and the diagnosis. We propose the design of a comprehensive, indexed atlas of digital mammograms. The design of an appropriate indexing scheme facilitates the implementation of content-based retrieval techniques needed for efficient access to and retrieval of relevant cases from the atlas. We also propose the use of mobile software agents for facilitating remote consultation of the atlas. Mobile agents can move between data sources such as the atlas and hospital repositories, perform computational tasks at each site, and return only relevant data to the user These features reduce the computational requirements of the local computer system, bandwidth requirements, and overall network traffic. Proposed applications of the atlas include research, remote consultation, teaching, evaluation Of CAD systems, and self-evaluation by radiologists.