Band-limited histogram equalization for mammograms contrast enhancement

Abstract

Early detection of breast cancer is the most effective method of reducing mortality. Mammography is at present the best available technique for early detection of breast cancer. The most common breast abnormalities that may indicate breast cancer are masses and calcifications. In mammograms, cancer is not easily detected by the eyes because of the bad imaging quality. To improve the correct diagnosis rate of cancer, image-enhancement techniques are often used to enhance the image and aid the radiologists. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm for mammograms contrast enhancement. The proposed algorithm performs band-limited histogram equalization (BLHE) for certain intensity band of the mammogram histogram. According to the opinion of radiologist, the proposed algorithm showed promising performance when applied on several mammography images. In addition, the proposed algorithm was combined with a wavelet-based contrast enhancement method to further improve its performance.