A Robust Feature Extraction Technique for Breast Cancer Detection using Digital Mammograms based on Advanced GLCM Approach

INTRODUCTION: Breast cancer is the most hazardous disease among women worldwide. A simple, cost-effective, and efficient screening called mammographic imaging is used to find the breast abnormalities to detect breast cancer in the early stages so that the patient’s health can be improved.

OBJECTIVES: The main challenge is to extract the features by using a novel technique called Advanced Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix (AGLCM) from pre-processed images and to classify the images using machine learning algorithms.

METHODS: To achieve this, we proposed a four-step process: image acquisition, pre-processing, feature extraction, and classification. Initially, a pre-processing technique called Contrast Limited Advanced Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) is used to increase the contrast of images and the features are retrieved using AGLCM which extracts texture, intensity and shape-based features as these are important to identify the abnormality.

RESULTS: In our framework, a classifier called eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) is applied on mammograms and the results are compared with other classifiers such as Random Forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The experiments are done on the Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) dataset.

CONCLUSION: The outcome achieved with CLAHE+ AGLCM+ XGBoost classifier is better than the existing methods. In future, we experiment on large datasets and also concentrate on optimal features selection to increase the classification.