  In this paper, we present a novel method for the segmentation of breast
masses from mammograms exploring structured and deep learning. Specifically,
using structured support vector machine (SSVM), we formulate a model that
combines different types of potential functions, including one that classifies
image regions using deep learning. Our main goal with this work is to show the
accuracy and efficiency improvements that these relatively new techniques can
provide for the segmentation of breast masses from mammograms. We also propose
an easily reproducible quantitative analysis to as- sess the performance of
breast mass segmentation methodologies based on widely accepted accuracy and
running time measurements on public datasets, which will facilitate further
comparisons for this segmentation problem. In particular, we use two publicly
available datasets (DDSM-BCRP and INbreast) and propose the computa- tion of
the running time taken for the methodology to produce a mass segmentation given
an input image and the use of the Dice index to quantitatively measure the
segmentation accuracy. For both databases, we show that our proposed
methodology produces competitive results in terms of accuracy and running time.
