Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death among women
worldwide. There are a number of techniques used for diagnosing this disease:
mammography, ultrasound, and biopsy, among others. Each of these has
well-known advantages and disadvantages. A relatively new method, based
on the temperature a tumor may produce, has recently been explored:
thermography. In this paper, we will evaluate the diagnostic power of thermography
in breast cancer using Bayesian network classifiers. We will show
how the information provided by the thermal image can be used in order to
characterize patients suspected of having cancer. Our main contribution is the
proposal of a score, based on the aforementioned information, that could help
distinguish sick patients from healthy ones. Our main results suggest the potential
of this technique in such a goal but also show its main limitations that
have to be overcome to consider it as an effective diagnosis complementary
tool.
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