Telemammography across an ad hoc network

Abstract

One of the goals of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) cancer control program to reach more than 80% of the eligible women in mammography screening by the year 2000 yet remains as a challenge. That is primarily due to 1) the fact that examination process is a complex and lengthy one and 2) it is not available to the majority of women who live in remote and urban sites. This problem can be solved using ad hoc networking technologies and signal processing algorithms. Software modules can help detect true negatives (TN), while marking true positives (TP) for further investigation. This reduces the load on network and radiologists by a tremendous amount. Ad hoc networking equipment makes clinic-lab connection more accessible and image enhancement algorithms readily available to the radiologists. In this research automatic robust computer assisted diagnostic (CAD) methods for mass detection in breast cancer have been associated with region of interest (ROI) compression for efficient transmission over ad hoc networks. This telemammography system for remote computer-aided breast cancer detection and diagnosis has the advantage of better reach of women for cancer screening and at the same time provides the diagnosis with higher efficiency, better accuracy, and lower cost.