ROI Extraction in Thermographic Breast Images Using Genetic Algorithms

Abstract

This work proposes the use of Genetic Algorithms (GA) to identify the area of the breast from the background in thermographic breast images. The proposed method uses color information, a fitness function based on cardioids, and GA. This is the first work in the literature to propose a Region of Interest (ROI) extraction based on GA and cariods. ROI extraction can improve the accuracy of cancer detection and assist with the standardization of acquisition protocols. The method is able to successfully separate the breast region in 52 out of 58 images, while being fully automatic, and not requiring manual selection of seed points.