Ubiquitous Computing and Communication Journal

CLASSIFICATION OF MC CLUSTERS IN DIGITAL MAMMOGRAPHY

VIA HARALICK DESCRIPTORS AND HEURISTIC EMBEDDED
FEATURE SELECTION METHOD
Imad Zyout1, PhD
Department of Electrical Engineering, Tafila Technical University, Tafila 66110, Jordan
Ikhlas Abdel-Qader2, PhD, PE
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western Michigan University, MI 49008, USA
Christina Jacobs3, MD
Radiology Department, Bronson Methodist Hospital, MI 49007,USA.
Email:1izyout@ttu.edu.jo, 2abdelqader@wmich.edu, 3jacobsc@bronsonhg.org,

ABSTRACT
Characterizing the texture of mammographic tissue is an efficient and robust tool for the diagnosis of
microcalcification (MC) clusters in mammography because it does not require a prior MC segmentation stage. This
work is not only intended to validate MCs surrounding tissue hypothesis that reveals the potential of breast tissue
surrounding MCs to diagnose microcalcifications, but to present an improvement over the existing methods by
introducing a new heuristic feature selection based on particle swarm optimization and KNN classifier (PSO-KNN).
Using MC clusters from mini-MIAS and a local dataset, our results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed
characterization and feature selection methods.
Keywords: Microcalcification cluster, surrounding tissue, Haralick measures, embedded feature selection.
1 INTRODUCTION
Morphology based methods are the primary tools for
diagnosis and decision making on the nature of
mammographic microcalcifications [1]. However, a key
and challenging step for analyzing clustered
microcalcifications using their shape is the segmentation
stage [2]. An alternative and promising method for
characterizing MCs is by analyzing the texture of
mammographic regions enclosing them [3]. Texturebased computer-aided diagnosis of MCs overrides the
need for the MC segmentation stage. A texture-based
diagnosis approach is also more suitable for
characterizing the texture dependency and spectral
properties that are invisible to human eyes and cannot be
described using shape measures. Such alternative method
has been investigated in several studies [3]-[9]. A
common shortcoming of [4]-[6], [8]-[9] is the bias of
texture analysis due to the presence of breast
calcifications that are tiny deposits of calcium, which
cannot be considered malignant or benign lesions. A few
studies [3],[7] from the literature have attempted to
minimize the bias of the texture-based diagnosis by
excluding image locations that correspond to the
microcalcifications before characterizing the malignancy
of a given mammographic region. In answering the
question: can the texture of breast tissue surrounding

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MCs contribute to the diagnosis of MC clusters in

mammography? In [3] and [7], it was demonstrated that
the texture of breast tissue surrounding MCs can be
indeed useful for cancer diagnosis. Thiele et al. [7]
classified 54 MC clusters by extracting texture and fractal
features of the region surrounding each cluster and
reported a classification sensitivity of 89% and specificity
of 83%. Using Laws measures of texture and an
exhaustive feature search method, Karahaliou et al. [3]
also diagnosed 100 MC clusters from the DDSM dataset
by analyzing the surrounding texture of MCs and
produced a classification accuracy of 89 %. The results of
studies illustrate the importance of analyzing the texture
of tissue surrounding MCs to improve the performance of
the texture-based CADx of breast cancer and might
provide a diagnosis method that can avoid segmentation
of MCs. Feature selection approaches used in [3] and [7]
were based on exhaustive and linear discriminate analysis
methods, respectively. Such methods have their own
shortcomings. That is an exhaustive feature search has a
higher tendency to over-fit the training data. Also, feature
selection based on deterministic methods such as linear
discriminate analysis suffers from local minima problem
at higher rates than heuristic search methods such as
Genetic algorithms [11] and particle swarm optimization

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(PSO) [12]. Moreover, in this work, we decided to use a

heuristic search based on PSO that since it is more
efficient than a GA approach [13] that is a heuristic
search using PSO is easy to implement with fewer
parameter to be selected during initialization and
optimization stages.
2 BACKGROUND
2.1 Heuristic parameter selection using PSO
PSO is a population-based heuristic search method
[12], [14], which was inspired by the social behaviors of
schools of fish and flocks of birds. According to the PSO
algorithm, individuals or particles from the swarm cowork to find an optimal solution to the parameter
selection problem. Similar to other population search
methods, the PSO algorithm starts with random
initialization of the candidates (particles) in the parameter
space. During the optimization process, the PSO
algorithm stores the locations of the personal best fitness
or achievement x kp [ xkp1 , xkp2 ,...] that has been accomplished by each individual and the global best fitness
x g [ x1g , x2g ,...] achieved by all individuals or particles in
the swarm. This information is then used to update the
movement and the location of the particles in the
parameter space. The new velocity vki (t 1) is expressed as
vki (t 1) w.vki (t ) c1.r1.(xki (t ) xkip ) c2 .r2 .(xki (t ) xig )

(1)
Where w is constant, typically in interval [0.0 1.0], and
represents the inertia of the movement, r1 and r2 are

the diagnosis of microcalcifications in mammography [4][6].Characterizing texture using Haralick measures is

based on analyzing the second order statistics of the graylevel histogram of the given region. Such a process can be
accomplished by forming a set of gray-level-cooccurrence matrices (GLCMs). A GLCM represents the
frequency of the occurrence of a gray-levels i and j
separated by distances x and y along x and y
directions. Co-occurrence matrices usually computed for
specific displacements x and y and four directional
angles: 0 o, 45 o, 90 o, and 135o. This process leads to four
GLCM matrices.
From each GLCM matrix, we compute a set of twenty
Haralick measures as shown in Table 1. This set of
measures includes autocorrelation, energy, entropy,
contrast, local homogeneity, correlation, clusters shade,
clusters prominence, dissimilarity, sum of squares, sum
average, maximum probability, sum entropy, difference
entropy, sum variance, difference variance, information
measure of correlation I, information measure of
correlation II, inverse difference normalized(INN), and
inverse difference moment normalized.
Using the four GLCM matrices, the average, range,
and standard deviation of each texture measure is
calculated and used as texture features. This step leads to
sixty GLCM features. For the purpose of testing the
power of the proposed heuristic feature selection
approach, we did not attempt to use any of the common
feature filters [16] or dimensionality reduction methods
such as reducing the number of features by eliminating
descriptors of poor discriminative power.

random numbers between [0.0 1.0], and c1 and c2 are

non-negative constants representing the learning rates. To
control the search speed, the ith velocity vki (t ) is
constrained by the user to be in the range [viMin , viMax ] .
Using the new velocity computed in (1), the new location
xki (t 1) is updated as

xki (t 1) xki (t ) vki (t 1)

(2)

This iterative search process is continued until a

predefined termination criterion, a fitness value or
maximum number of iterations, is reached.
2.2 Texture features based on Haralick measures

Table 1: List of Haralick measures.

No. Measure description

No.

Measure description

1
2
3
4
5
6

Autocorrelation

11

Sum of squares: Variance

Contrast

12

Sum average

Correlation

13

Sum variance

Cluster Prominence

14

Sum entropy

Cluster Shade

15

Difference variance

Dissimilarity

16

Energy

17

Entropy

18

Homogeneity

19

Maximum probability

20

Difference entropy
Information measure
of correlation 1
Information measure
of correlation 2
Inverse difference
normalized (INN)
Inverse difference
moment normalized

10

Haralik features were first introduced for

characterizing Alzheimers disease in magnetic resonance
images (MRI) [15]. These features have been used also in

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CLASSIFICATION USING PSO-KNN

The process of differentiating between malignant and

benign MC clusters is accomplished through three stages:
texture analysis using Haralick measures of the
surrounding tissue, feature selection, and a pattern
classification using a KNN classifier. As shown in Figure
1, the process of characterizing the texture of the tissue
surrounding MCs involves selecting a mammographic
region that best fits each MC cluster, segmentation of
MCs surrounding tissue by removing the image regions
corresponding to microcalcifications, and analyzing the
texture of the surrounding tissue using Haralick measures.
We briefly describe the four stages of the diagnosis
scheme as follows:
Mammographic region selection: Microcalcification
cluster ground truth that represents the radiologist
interpretation of each mammogram and includes the
degree of the malignancy and the size of the region best
depicts each cluster is used to select the mammographic
region. Due to the variability of the size of MC clusters,
we used one region size that is larger than the size of most
of clusters. For instance, regions of size of 128128 and
256256 pixels are used to analyze mammogram of 100
m and 200 m spatial resolutions, respectively.
Microcalcification segmentation: We used a dual tophat morphological transform that uses two structuring
elements to segment individual MCs as was introduced in
[9]. Each top-hat filtering stage is followed by a
thresholding step that is to produce a binary
representation of the segmented microcalcifications.
Then, the segmentation outcomes from the two filtering
stages are logically added to produce the final
segmentation results with an example shown in Figure 2b.

Digital
Mammogram

PSO-KNN
Feature Selection

KNN Classifier

Surrounding tissue segmentation: Utilizing the results

of MC segmentation, this step involves removal of image
regions correspond to segmented MCs by means of
image subtraction step to produce a region of the
surrounding tissue. An example of surrounding tissue
segmentation is shown in Figure 2c.
Texture analysis using Haralick features: This stage
exploits the second order probability of gray-level
histogram of the surrounding texture of each MC cluster
using sixty Haralick, GLCM texture descriptors, as was
presented in Table 1.
Embedded feature selection using PSO-kNN: For
selecting the most discriminative Haralick features and
for accomplishing a dimensionality reduction of the input
feature space, we used an embedded feature selection
strategy that uses a heuristic parameter search based on
PSO and KNN classifier. An embedded feature selection
scheme using a PSO-KNN framework incorporates the
feature selection stage during the classifier learning
process, hence, we are proposing a hyprid PSO algorithm.
Each PSO particle is represented by N+D coordinates of
which N coordinates are allocated for the feature search
while D coordinates are used for the classifier parameter
selection. Because this work uses a KNN classifier for the
classifying stage, K parameter is the only parameter to be
adjusted during the learning process.
PSO-KNN fitness function: Performance criteria such as
the classification accuracy and area under a receiver
operating characteristic (ROC) curve, estimated using a
leave-one-out (LOO) training and testing method, are
possible selections for the objective function of the
heuristic optimization using a PSO-KNN framework.

Region Selection*

Haralick Feature
Extraction

MC
Segmentation

Srrounding Tissue
Segmentation

* A region selection stage utilizes MC cluster ground truth provided

with each mammogram

Figure 1: Characterization of MC clusters using surrounding tissue and PSO-KNN embedded feature selection.
`

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(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 2: Segmentation of surrounding tissue. (a) An original mammographic region of size of 256 256 pixels
with a malignant MC cluster, (b) segmented microcalcifications and (c) surrounding tissue obtained by subtracting
image regions corresponding to the segmented MCs from the original region shown in (a), that is subtracting the
corresponding gray-level image representation of fig.2b from the image in fig.2a.

However, for applications such as the diagnosis of

microcalcifications clusters, it is important to find a
solution that achieves the best classification accuracy as
well as the best generalization performance. In this study,
we selected a cross-validation based on a leave-one-out
(LOO) technique since such a method will ensure
unbiased estimation of the classifier generalization
performance [9]. Furthermore, an LOO approach is an
excellent choice when the size of the dataset is relatively
small. The LOO fitness ( f i ) of the ith candidate solution
of the PSO-KNN scheme is defined as

fi TPFi TNFi exp( ( Ni 1) / N )

(3)

where TPFi and TNFi are the true positive (or

Sensitivity) and true negative (Specificity) fractions of
the classification performance of the ith solution. Also,
N and N i are the dimensionality of the original and ith
selected feature spaces, respectively.
4

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

4.1 Test data

This study uses two datasets to validate the proposed
characterization and feature selection methods. The first
set of mammograms is from the public screen film
mammography dataset provided by the Mammographic
Image Analysis Society (MIAS) [17]. Each mammogram
in the mini-MIAS dataset is of 10241024 pixels with
200m pixels size and 8-bit depth. This dataset contains
23 mammograms with MCs from which we extracted 33
MC clusters (13 benign and 20 are malignant).

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The second set of mammograms was obtained from the

digital mammography system of Bronson Methodist
Hospital (BMH, MI). This dataset consists of 30 digital
mammograms of 100-m pixels size and 16-bit depth.
These digital mammograms contain 35 MC clusters of
which 18 are benign and 17 are malignant.
4.2 Experimental setup
All results presented in this paper have been
produced using a heuristic search algorithm with the
swarm size of 100 and the maximum number of
iterations is set to 50. The fitness function of the PSOKNN heuristic embedded feature selection, introduced
in Section 3, is designed to simultaneously find a
learning model that is simple but still provide the best
generalization and classification performance while
maintaining an acceptable computational complexity
level of the algorithm. Due to the difference in the
spatial resolution between the digitized screen film
mammograms
from
mini-MIAS
and
digital
mammograms from the Bronson Methodist Hospital
(BMH), regions of size 128128 and 256256 pixels
have been used to characterize MC clusters from miniMIAS and BMH datasets, respectively. Because MC
clusters from MIAS and BMH datasets vary in size, we
have selected the region size that best fits most of the
clusters from each dataset.
4.3 Results Analysis and Discussion
Results of using GLCM features to characterize MCs
surrounding tissue and the PSO-KNN embedded feature
selection scheme to analyze or classify the malignancy

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of MC clusters form BRONSON and mini-MIAS

datasets are presented in Table 2.The abundant number
of features, 60, in this study and the relatively small size
of the dataset led to have many feature subsets that
produce same classification accuracy. This challenge has
been minimized through appropriate selection of the
fitness value of the PSO-KNN heuristic parameter
selection process. Rather than using the classification
accuracy, which is the percentage of misclassified
examples, this work instead incorporates the
classifications specificity, sensitivity, and the
dimensionality of the selected feature space in the
selection of the best learning model. Using the
classification accuracy as an objective function of the
PSO-KNN scheme, several learning models achieved
the same classification accuracy. For instance, two
models have accomplished a perfect classification
accuracy of 100% of MC clusters from MIAS datasets
and several models have achieved classification
accuracy of 94 % on Bronson datasets. Hence, including

both the classification performance and the

dimensionality of the selected feature space has helped
in selecting the best learning models, as presented in
Table 3. As shown by Table 3, the best learning models
for MIAS and Bronson are models with five and with
four Haralick features, respectively.
As for the most discriminative Haralick features,
our results indicate that the most distinguishing features
are slightly different form one dataset to another. This
difference is mostly because mammographic regions
from MIAS and BMH are different in terms of the
spatial and contrast resolutions. For the MCs
surrounding tissue of MIAS dataset, we found the most
discriminative features to be: the standard deviation of
Inverse difference normalized, average of difference
entropy, standard deviation of cluster shade. While
those of the BMH dataset are: the average of inverse
difference moment normalized, standard deviation and
range of dissimilarity, standard deviation of sum of
average, and standard deviation of inverse difference
normalized.

Table 2 : Classification of MC clusters using PSO-KNN approach and Haralick features.

Dataset

TPF

FPF

Accuracy

Fitness

miniMIAS

3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3

5
7
2
6
7
4
6
5

1
1
0.95
1
0.94
0.88
0.94
0.88

1
1
0.92
0.92
0.94
1.0
0.94
1.0

1
1
0.94
0.96
0.94
0.94
0.94
0.94

0.064
0.095
0.138
0.151
0.196
0.161
0.180
0.175

Bronson

Table 3: Details of PSO-KNN learning models that achieve the highest classification performance.
Dataset

TPF

FNF

Accuracy

1.0

1.0

1.0

Haralick Features
Avg. of Inverse difference normalized
Avg. of Difference entropy
SD of Cluster Shade

miniMIAS

SD of Cluster Prominence
Range of inverse difference normalized

Bronson

0.88

1.0

0.94

Avg. of Inverse difference normalized

SD of Dissimilarity
Range of Dissimilarity
Range of the Sum of average

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In this work, we also examined the impact of the size

of the mammographic regions (i.e. the region of the
surrounding tissue) on the performance of the
malignancy analysis using the surrounding tissue and on
the outcome of the classification and feature selection
using PSO-KNN. Results from the mini-MIAS dataset
indicate the importance of using appropriate region size
of the surrounding tissue. That is using regions of size
256256 pixels to analyze the surrounding tissue and
classify MC clusters from mini-MIAS, the best result
was 94% accuracy that corresponds to TPF of 1.0 and
FPF of 0.90 and three Haralick features. The results of
this study demonstrated significant differences with
respect to which Haralick features produce the best
classification performance. However, this result needs
further validation using other datasets and other sizes of
the surrounding tissue.
5

in mammograms, Pattern Recognition, Vol. 37,

pp.1973-1986 (2004).
[5] H. S. Zadeh., P.S. Nezhad, and F. R. Rad: Shape

based and texture-based feature extraction for

classification
of
microcalcifications
in
mammograms. Proceedings from SPIE Medical
Imaging, Vol. 4322, pp. 3010-310 (2001).
[6] H. P. Chan, B. Sahiner, K. L. Lam, N. Petrick, M.

A. Helvie, M. M. Goodsitt, and D. D. Adler:

Computerized
analysis
of
mammographic
microcalcifications in morphological and texture
feature spaces, Medical Physics, pp.20072019
(1998).
[7] Thiele, D. L., Kimme-Smith, C., Johnson, T. D.,

McCombs, M. and Bassett, L. W.: Using tissue

texture surrounding calcification clusters to predict
benign vs malignant outcomes. Medical Physics,
Vol. 23, pp. 549-555(1996).

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we characterized the malignancy of

MC clusters using Haralick features of the MCs
surrounding tissue integrated into an embedded feature
selection framework based on a heuristic PSO-KNN
approach. Two mammogram datasets were used to
validate the surrounding tissue hypothesis and to
investigate the effectiveness of the proposed feature
selection and classification methods. Using MC clusters
from mini-MIAS and BMH datasets, we have achieved a
classification performance of accuracy of 100% and 94
%, respectively. Results of this study also indicate that
the chosen size of the surrounding tissue has some
impact on the feature selection and classifier outcomes.
This work also reveals the potential of the second order
statistics of the MCs surrounding tissue as another tool
to assist radiologists in the diagnosis of breast cancer.
6

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