Smartphone Mammography for Breast Cancer Screening

Abstract

In 2020 alone approximately 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer which caused over 685,000 deaths worldwide. Breast cancer affects women in developing countries more severely than in developed country such that over 60% of deaths due to breast cancer occur in developing countries. Deaths due to breast cancer can be reduced significantly if it is diagnosed at an early stage. However, in developing countries cancer is often diagnosed when it is in the advanced stage due to limited medical resources available to women, lack of awareness, financial constraints as well as cultural stigma associated with traditional screening methods. Our paper aims to provide an alternative to women that is easily available to them, affordable, safe, non-invasive and can be self-administered. We propose the use of a smartphone’s inbuilt camera and flashlight for breast cancer screening before any signs or symptoms begin to appear. This is a novel approach as there is presently no device that can be used by women themselves without any supervision from a medical professional and uses a smartphone without any additional external devices for breast cancer screening. The smartphone mammography brings the screening facility to the user such that it can be used at the comfort and privacy of their homes without the need to travel long distances to hospitals or diagnostic centers. The theory of the system is that when visible light penetrates through the skin into the breast tissue, it reflects back differently in normal breast tissue as compared to tissue with anomalies. A phantom breast model, which mimics real human breast tissue, is used to develop the modality. We make use of computer vision and image processing techniques to analyze the difference between an image taken of a normal breast and that of one with irregularities in order to detect lumps in the breast tissue and also make some diagnosis on its size, density and the location. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.