Abstract
Breast cancer is the leading disease in incidence and mortality among women in developing countries. The opportune diagnosis of this disease strengthens the survival index. Mammography application is limited by age and periodicity. Temperature is a physical magnitude that can be measured by using multiple sensing techniques. IR (infrared) thermography using commercial cameras is gaining relevance in industrial and medical applications because it is a non-invasive and non-intrusive technology. Asymmetrical temperature in certain human body zones is associated with cancer. In this paper, an IR thermographic sensor is applied for breast cancer detection. This work includes an automatic breast segmentation methodology, to spot the hottest regions in thermograms using the morphological watershed operator to help the experts locate the tumor. A protocol for thermogram acquisition considering the required time to achieve a thermal stabilization is also proposed. Breast thermograms are evaluated as thermal matrices, instead of gray scale or false color images, increasing the certainty of the provided diagnosis. The proposed tool was validated using the Database for Mastology Research and tested in a voluntary group of 454 women of different ages and cancer stages with good results, leading to the possibility of being used as a supportive tool to detect breast cancer and angiogenesis cases.
Highlights
IntroductionNot exclusive to women, the incidence number is one hundred-times higher than in men, representing the first cause of death in the female population in under-developed regions [2]
Breast cancer is the leading disease both in incidence numbers and mortality among women [1]. not exclusive to women, the incidence number is one hundred-times higher than in men, representing the first cause of death in the female population in under-developed regions [2]
This paper presents a supportive tool for breast cancer detection using IR thermography as a sensor
Summary
Not exclusive to women, the incidence number is one hundred-times higher than in men, representing the first cause of death in the female population in under-developed regions [2]. Such a situation can be attributed to late diagnosis, which occurs when the cancer has spread out or metastasized, causing devastating results; on the other hand, when early diagnosis is performed, the survival index can go up to 95% [3]. Mammography, considered as the gold standard method, is the most used tool to detect breast cancer [4]. The use of additional non-invasive sensing technologies help the experts in the detection and diagnosis
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