Characterizing Image Properties for Digital Mammograms

This paper appeared at the Australasian Workshop on Health Informatics and Knowledge Management (HIKM 2009), Wellington, New Zealand. Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology (CRPIT), Vol. 97. J. Warren, Ed. Reproduction for academic, not-for profit purposes permitted provided this text is included.Adoption of computed radiology (CR) and direct radiology (DR) imaging for screening mammograms in many countries alongside digitally scanned film mammograms has resulted in a wide range of different intrinsic (physical) characteristics of images becoming commonplace. It is sometimes conjectured that viewer performance could be adversely affected by this wider variability, as compared with the variability that was formerly experienced with film only. This paper identifies several aspects of the image characteristics relevant to viewer perception, including intensity properties (such as contrast), spatial properties (such as texture) and structure properties (such as breast density). We then provide quantitative descriptions of the variability of these properties over a test set of 12 screening mammograms drawn from three different modalities and containing a typical mix of screening cases.