By: Drafting Quo / Source: Notimex
Wednesday 22 April 2015
Scientists at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (CINVESTAV) of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) developed a software that analyzes ultrasound imaging to detect breast cancer, with which would avoid biopsies benign tumors.
The purpose of this computer program is to predict with high accuracy whether a lesion is benign or malignant, said the scientist Tamaulipas unit, Wilfrido Flores Gómez, in an interview with Notimex.
The scientist explained that now works for the software to give the result in the BI-RADS scale, it would give a probability of malignancy with which they are more familiar radiologists and whose prototype would be ready in three years.
He stressed that the system does not replace the radiologist but help , especially if it is a specialist inexperienced or if there is doubt in some cases, because by using the software the radiologist may have a better decision recommend a biopsy.
This tool processes in four stages ultrasound images. The first one is to reduce the noise that all ultrasound images have.
It is passed a filter so that the image does not look as dirty and even if it is an image that has low contrast, ie you can not distinguish well tissue damage around, improves contrast, “explained Gómez Flores.
Once the image is clean and well contrasted, the second phase called segmentation separates the image background or tissue adjacent to obtain what is called region of interest.
In this step a binary image, ie in black and white occurs. White is the lesion or tumor, which is what we want and black, is the bottom part.
The next stage extracts the characteristics of the lesion considering two attributes: morphological, which quantify the irregularity of the contour to characterize the shape of the lesion and its orientation, and texture, as each relates to a tissue type and it is known that in malignant tumors, the texture is very heterogeneous.
The results of this phase are numerical and allow the classifier, the last step, determine whether the lesion is benign or malignant to analyze a new case.
Gomez Flores said the software could be an alternative to the lack of radiologists that are in the state of Tamaulipas and which could also save money and time.
At present, the specialist working on an agreement with the Uneme-DEDICAM center that allows access to more data to add to the software, since it only has two thousand, which would also allow clinically using this system.
He added that this work, which takes 10 years, collaborating with researchers at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to develop a system of mammography, in order to integrate these two tools for better diagnosis.
According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO) annually 1.3 million cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in Mexico 5000 recorded 700 deaths from this disease.
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