International Journal of Engineering and Technology

The field of medical imaging is gaining importance with an increase in the demand for automated, reliable, fast and efficient diagnosis. Breast cancer accounts for 22.9% of illnesses amongst women worldwide. Identification plays an important part in the diagnosis of benign and malignant tumors. A prime reason behind an increase in the number of cancer patients worldwide is the ignorance towards treatment of a tumor in its early stages. This project is initiated with basic pre-processing steps using filtering, contrast adjustment and stretching techniques. These techniques aid in noise removal, thus obtaining a well-defined tumor to work upon. In order to clearly demarcate the tumor from the rest of the original image, several methods have been applied, which include image subtraction and extending the minima function of the image. This is then followed by filling in holes near the tumor and applying segmentation techniques to the image. Therefore, the final image displays the tumor, encircled within a border, against the original image.