Over the last few decades, astronomical image processing has become extremely sophisticated, encompassing image reconstruction and restoration, image filtering, object detection and classification. A collaboration from the Space Telescope Science Institute, in Baltimore; Johns Hopkins University; and the Lombardi Cancer Research Center at the Georgetown University Medical Center, in Washington, DC, is hoping to apply some of these methods to detect telltale signs of breast cancer in a digitized mammogram. The project was catalyzed over a year ago by Benjamin Snavely, program director for advanced technologies and instrumentation in the NSF division of astronomical sciences, which recently awarded the collaboration a $50 000 grant from the Small Grants for Exploratory Research Program.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
June 1995
June 01 1995
Astronomical Image Processing May Improve Breast Cancer Diagnostics
Medical and astronomical researchers have collaborated to apply sophisticated image processing techniques to detect microcalcifications in mammograms.
Physics Today 48 (6), 21–22 (1995);