Classification of scattering media within benign and malignant breast tumors based on ultrasound texture‐feature‐based and Nakagami‐parameter images

Abstract

Purpose: Benign and malignant tumors can be classified by using texture analysis of the ultrasound B-scan image to describe the variation in the echogenicity of scatterers. The recently proposed ultrasonic Nakagami parametric image has also been used to detect the concentrations and arrangements of scatterers for tumor characterization applications. B-scan-based texture analysis and the Nakagami parametric image are functionally complementary in ultrasonic tissue characterizations and this study aimed to combine these methods in order to improve the ability to characterize breast tumors. Methods: To validate this concept, radio-frequency data obtained from 130 clinical cases were used to construct the texture-feature parametric image and the Nakagami parametric image. Four texturefeature parameters based on a gray-level co-occurrence matrix ͑homogeneity, contrast, energy, and variance͒ and the Nakagami parameters of the benign and malignant tumors were calculated. The usefulness of an individual parameter was determined and scatter graphs indicated the relationship between two selected texture-feature parameters. Fisher's linear discriminant analysis was used to combine the selected texture-feature parameters with the Nakagami parameter. The performance in classifying tumors was evaluated based on the receiver operating characteristic curve. Results: The results indicated that there is a trade-off between sensitivity and specificity when using an individual texture-feature parameter or when combining two such correlated parameters to discriminate benign and malignant cases. However, the best performance was obtained when combining selected texture-feature parameters with the Nakagami parameter. Conclusions:The study findings suggest that combining B-scan-based texture analysis and the Nakagami parametric image could improve the ability to classify benign and malignant breast tumors.

Quantitative ultrasound characterization of locally advanced breast cancer by estimation of its scatterer properties

“…5,21,26 Tumor grade, however, has not been characterized by QUS to date, though certain sonographic features have been identified that correlate with tumor grade. For instance, in a study by Kim et al,27 lack of circumscribed margins, abrupt boundaries, and hypoechoic or complex echo patterns were more frequently observed in grade III invasive tumors compared to grade I and II invasive tumors.…”

Ultrasound GLCM texture analysis of radiation‐induced parotid‐gland injury in head‐and‐neck cancer radiotherapy: An in vivo study of late toxicity

“…Since the introduction of GLCM by Haralick in the 1970s, 23 GLCM has been widely used as texture measurements in medical imaging. Over the years, many researchers have used GLCM texture analysis of ultrasound images for cancer diagnoses in various organs, ranging from the liver 24 and breast [25][26][27][28][29][30] to the parotid gland. 31 Our work is the first to investigate the GLCM textural features for the quantitative evaluation of radiation-induced parotid gland injury.…”

Strain‐compounding technique with ultrasound Nakagami imaging for distinguishing between benign and malignant breast tumors

“…22,23 The Nakagami parametric image (i.e., Nakagami image) based on the Nakagami statistical model has also been shown to be useful for discriminating between benign and malignant breast tumors, especially in terms of reducing the confounding effects of system and operator parameters. 16,24 Nevertheless, it is difficult to characterize tumors based on the data in a single Nakagami image, since the scatterer arrangements or concentrations in a breast tumor are not necessarily uniformly distributed. 16 Besides, RF-based assessments of quantitative information often focus on the scatterer characteristics in breast tumors and do not consider the tissue elasticity.…”