Breast Tumor Segmentation Based on Level-Set Method in 3D Sonography

Malignant and benign breast tumors exist discrepancies in their shape and size on sonography. Morphological information provided by the contour of tumor is important in clinical diagnosis. However, ultrasound images contain noises and tissue texture, clinical diagnosis must highly depend on expertise experience. The manual way to sketch 3D breast tumor contour is a time-consuming and complicated task. Automatic contour which provides similar contour with manual sketch of the breast tumor in the ultrasonic images might assist physicians in making an accurate diagnosis. This study presents an efficient segmentation procedure which based on level-set method for automatically detecting contours of breast tumors in 3D sonography. The proposed method always identified similar contours as were obtained by manual contouring of the breast tumor and could save much of the time required to sketch precise contours.