A novel method for breast cancer prognosis using wavelet packet based neural network

This paper presents an approach for early breast cancer diagnostic by employing combination of artificial neural networks (ANN) and wavelet based subband image decomposition which detect microcalcification in digital mammograms. The microcalcifications correspond to high-frequency components of the image spectrum, detection of microcalcifications is achieved by decomposing the mammograms into different frequency subbands, suppressing the low-frequency subband, and finally, reconstructing the mammogram from the subbands containing only high frequencies. For this approach we employed different types of wavelet packets. We used the result as an input of neural network for classification. The proposed methodology is tested using the Nijmegen and the Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) mammographic databases and images collected from local hospitals. Results are presented as the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) performance and are quantified by the area under the ROC curve.