Medical Imaging

Pattern Enhancement Processing for Mammography (PEM)

Emphasizes the dot patterns of calcifications which are difficult to display by MFP.

Calcifications appear as a dot pattern and mammary glands and blood vessels appear as linear patterns in the image.
This processing differentiates the two patterns and emphasizes only the dot pattern.

Example of PEM processing application

(a) Original image

(b) MFP-processed image
In MFP, the software differentiates an image by frequency bandwidths and adjusts their emphasis accordingly. However, all signals that belong to the same bandwidth are emphasized at the same density level regardless of whether they are dotted objects (calcifications) or linear objects (mammary glands and blood vessels), thus making the diagnosis difficult.

(c) PEM-processed image
In PEM processing, the software not only differentiates an image by frequency bandwidths but also by the structure of the object being analyzed and emphasizes only the selected object.
As a result of this software's quality to accurately differentiate the calcifications, we have been able to greatly improve our diagnostic efficiency.