Apparatus and method for detecting micro-calcifications in mammograms using novel algorithms and stochastic resonance noise is provided, where a suitable dose of noise is added to the abnormal mammograms such that the performance of a suboptimal lesion detector is improved without altering the detector's parameters. A stochastic resonance noise-based detection approach is presented to improve suboptimal detectors which suffer from model mismatch due to the Gaussian assumption. Furthermore, a stochastic resonance noise-based detection enhancement framework is presented to deal with more general model mismatch cases.