A Novel Bio-Inspired Method for Early Diagnosis of Breast Cancer through Mammographic Image Analysis

Abstract

Breast cancer is a current problem that causes the death of many women. In this work, we test meta-heuristics applied to the segmentation of mammographic images. Traditionally, the application of these algorithms has a direct relationship with optimization problems; however, in this study, its implementation is oriented to the segmentation of mammograms using the Dunn index as an optimization function, and the grey levels to represent each individual. The update of grey levels during the process results in the maximization of the Dunn’s index function; the higher the index, the better the segmentation will be. The results showed a lower error rate using these meta-heuristics for segmentation compared to a well-adopted classical approach known as the Otsu method.