Fully automatic fibroglandular tissue segmentation in breast MRI: atlas-based approach

Breast density measurement in Breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is becoming important due to its relation with the risk factor for developing breast cancer. In this work we developed a fully automatic method for the segmentation of fibroglandular tissue. The method consist of a first step based on a Bayesian framework using atlas information for the separation of the pectoral and the breast, and a second refinement stage by LDA. The method was evaluated over 27 cases comparing the obtained segmentations to the manual ones. A Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 0.75 was obtained.