Computer-aided diagnosis of solid breast nodules on ultrasound with digital image processing and artificial neural network.

A computer-aided diagnosis algorithm identifying breast nodule malignancy using multiple ultrasonography features and artificial neural network classifier was developed from a database of 584 histologically-confirmed cases containing 300 benign and 284 malignant breast nodules. The features were extracted from sonographic images through digital image processing. An artificial neural network then distinguished malignant nodules based on those features. The trained artificial neural network showed the normalized area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.95.