BREAST CYTOLOGY DIAGNOSIS WITH DIGITAL IMAGE-ANALYSIS

An interactive computer system has been developed for evaluating cytologic features derived directly from a digital scan of breast fine needle aspirate slides. The system uses computer vision techniques to analyze cell nuclei and classifies them using an inductive method based on linear programming. A digital scan of selected areas of the aspirate slide is done by a trained observer, while the analysis of the digitized image is done by an untrained observer. When trained and tested on 119 breast fine needle aspirates (68 benign and 51 malignant) using leave-one-out testing, 90% correctness was achieved. These results indicate that the method is accurate (good intraobserver and interobserver reproducibility) and that an untrained operator can obtain diagnostic results comparable to those achieved visually by experienced observers.