A connected component labelling algorithm for greyscale mammography image processing as a pre-processing tool

  • Authors:

  • Roshan Dharshana Yapa;Koichi Harada

  • Affiliations:

  • Information Major, Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University, Japan;Information Major, Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University, Japan

  • Venue:
  • Machine Graphics & Vision International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

A new algorithm for connected component-labelling is presented in this paper. The proposed algorithm requires only one scan through an image for labelling connected components. Once this algorithm encounters a starting pixel of a component, it traces in full all the contour pixels and all internal pixels of that particular component. The algorithm recognizes components of the image one at a time while scanning in the raster order. This property will be useful in areas such as image matching, image registration, content-based information retrieval and image segmentation. It is also capable of extracting the contour pixels of an image and storing them in a clock-wise directional order, which will provide useful information in many applications. The algorithm assigns consecutive label numbers to different components, and therefore requires a minimum number of labels. We have used the algorithm in mammography image processing as a pre-processing tool, and have demonstrated the possibility of using it for breast tissue segmentation and for detecting regions of interest in breast tissue. Another important advantage of the algorithm is that it can be used as a content-based image retrieval tool for retrieving images based on the visual contents of a given image. This would be very useful in retrieving related images from large scale medical databases.