Classification of breast ultrasound images using fractal feature.

Fractal analyses have been applied successfully for the image compression, texture analysis, and texture image segmentation. The fractal dimension could be used to quantify the texture information. In this study, the differences of gray value of neighboring pixels are used to estimate the fractal dimension of an ultrasound image of breast lesion by using the fractal Brownian motion. Furthermore, a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system based on the fractal analysis is proposed to classify the breast lesions into two classes: benign and malignant. To improve the classification performances, the ultrasound images are preprocessed by using morphology operations and histogram equalization. Finally, the k-means classification method is used to classify benign tumors from malignant ones. The US breast image databases include only histologically confirmed cases: 110 malignant and 140 benign tumors, which were recorded. All the digital images were obtained prior to biopsy using by an ATL HDI 3000 system. The receiver operator characteristic (ROC) area index AZ is 0.9218, which represents the diagnostic performance.

Influences of apolipoprotein E polymorphism on the risk for breast cancer and HER2/neu status in Taiwan.

Apolipoprotein E (APOE) polymorphism plays an important role in lipid metabolism. Preliminary evidence suggests that APOE genotype appears to be a risk factor for not only cardiovascular disease, but also Alzheimer's disease and cancer. We screened the APOE genotype in 290 breast cancer patients and 232 non-cancer controls and determined the relationship between APOE gene polymorphism and breast cancer in Taiwan. We found risk for breast cancer was associated with the APOE genotype (xi(2) = 8.652, p = 0.013). Carriers of the epsilon4 allele were more common in breast cancer cases than carriers of epsilon3 allele (p = 0.004, OR = 1.786, 95% CI: 1.197-2.664). In addition, the epsilon4 allele is also associated with HER2/neu negative status in breast cancer patients (p = 0.006, OR = 0.277, 95% CI: 0.111-0.693). No significant associations between APOE genotype and tumor grade, TN classification, progesterone receptor, estrogen receptor, lymphatic invasion, or recurrence of breast cancer were in evidence. These results suggest that the APOE epsilon4 allele may be a risk factor for breast cancer and correlates with HER2/neu negative status.