Bayesian Network Decomposition for Modeling Breast Cancer Detection

The automated differentiation between benign and malignant abnormalities is a difficult problem in the breast cancer domain. While previous studies consider a single Bayesian network approach, in this paper we propose a novel perspective based on Bayesian network decomposition. We consider three methods that allow for different (levels of) network topological or structural decomposition. Through examples, we demonstrate some advantages of Bayesian network decomposition for the problem at hand: (i) natural and more intuitive representation of breast abnormalities and their features (ii) compact representation and efficient manipulation of large conditional probability tables, and (iii) a possible improvement in the knowledge acquisition and representation processes.