Medical imaging techniques and computer aided diagnostic approaches for the detection of breast cancer with an emphasis on thermography - A review

In this article, a study of various medical imaging modalities and survey of computer aided detection (CAD) approaches used for the detection of breast cancer are presented. Early breast cancer detection, is important as it can increase the rate of diagnosis, cure and survival of the affected women. Medical imaging techniques can detect early signs of breast cancer. They are also used to diagnose, stage breast cancer and guide treatments. This article explains the imaging procedure, analysis of images, benefits and limitations of standard medical imaging techniques such as mammography, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, and thermography. Also some of modern imaging techniques are discussed here. Comparative study of mammography, ultrasound, thermography and magnetic resonance imaging describes the benefits of thermography in early detection of breast cancer. CAD provides a fast, reliable, and cost-effective second opinion to support doctors with the diagnostic management of breast cancer. This article reviews various CAD algorithms developed and studied for mammography, ultrasound and thermography. From the literature review, it is observed that accuracy of detection of breast abnormalities using CAD are decided by many factors, such as size of database, image quality, segmentation of region of interest, extracted features and classifiers used, etc.