Mammogram Analysis with YOLO Models on an Affordable Embedded System

Abstract

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Breast cancer persists as a leading cause of female mortality globally. Mammograms are a key screening tool for early detection, although many resource-limited hospitals lack access to skilled radiologists and advanced diagnostic tools. Deep learning-based computer-aided detection (CAD) systems can assist radiologists by automating lesion detection and classification. This study investigates the performance of various You Only Look Once (YOLO) models and a Hybrid Convolutional-Transformer Architecture (YOLOv5, YOLOv8, YOLOv10, YOLOv11, and Real-Time-DEtection Transformer (RT-DETR)) for detecting mammographic lesions on an affordable embedded system. METHODS: We developed a custom web-based annotation tool to enhance mammogram labeling accuracy, using a dataset of 3169 patients from Thailand and expert annotations from three radiologists. Lesions were classified into six categories: Masses Benign (MB), Calcifications Benign (CB), Associated Features Benign (AFB), Masses Malignant (MM), Calcifications Malignant (CM), and Associated Features Malignant (AFM). RESULTS: Our results show that the YOLOv11n model is the optimal choice for the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, achieving an accuracy of 0.86 and an inference speed of 6.16 ± 0.31 frames per second. A comparative analysis with a graphics processing unit (GPU)-powered system revealed that the Jetson Nano achieves comparable detection performance at a fraction of the cost. CONCLUSIONS: The current research landscape has not yet integrated advanced YOLO versions for embedded deployment in mammography. This method could facilitate screening in clinics without high-end workstations, demonstrating the feasibility of deploying CAD systems in low-resource environments and underscoring its potential for real-world clinical applications.