Imaging software automatically measures cancer advance

JANUARY 29, 2009--In breast or prostate cancers, the darkest regions of the medical image are usually the most affected ones. This image, produced by ultrasound of very poor quality, has to be segmented by hand by the doctor and then compared with an image obtained months before to calculate to what extent the cancer has advanced. Doing this by hand takes up valuable time and ideally the computer should do all this work and automatically measure any changes.

Because of this, Miguel Pagola Barrio at the University of Navarre (www.unavarra.es) has developed software focused on the segmentation of images in such a way that, based on a digital image, zones of interest can be automatically defined and extracted. The applications for these techniques are very varied -- from medical diagnosis in breast or prostate cancers to robotic production lines. For more information, go to: www.basqueresearch.com/berria_irakurri.asp?Berri_Kod=1907&hizk=I