Modeling realistic breast lesions using diffusion limited aggregation

Synthesizing the appearance of malignant masses and inserting these into digital mammograms can be used as part of a wider framework for investigating the radiological detection task in X-ray mammography. However, the randomness associated with cell division within cancerous masses and the associated complex morphology challenges the realism of the modeling process. In this paper, Diffusion Limited Aggregation (DLA), a type of fractal growth process is proposed and utilized for modeling breast lesions. Masses of different sizes, shapes and densities were grown by controlling DLA growth parameters either prior to growth, or dynamically updating these during growth. A validation study was conducted by presenting 30 real and 30 simulated masses in a random order to a team of radiologists. The results from the validation study suggest that the observers found it difficult to differentiate between the real and simulated lesions.