Skin cancer is considered as one of the most common types of cancer in several countries, and its incidence rate has increased in recent years. Melanoma cases have caused an increasing number of deaths worldwide, since this type of skin cancer is the most aggressive compared to other types. Computational methods have been developed to assist dermatologists in early diagnosis of skin cancer. An overview of the main and current computational methods that have been proposed for pattern analysis and pigmented skin lesion classification is addressed in this review. In addition, a discussion about the application of such methods, as well as future trends, is also provided. Several methods for feature extraction from both macroscopic and dermoscopic images and models for feature selection are introduced and discussed. Furthermore, classification algorithms and evaluation procedures are described, and performance results for lesion classification and pattern analysis are given.
The image segmentation of skin lesions has been addressed successfully in many studies; however, there is a demand for new methodologies in order to improve the efficiency.
a b s t r a c tSkin cancer is considered one of the most common types of cancer in several countries and its incidence rate has increased in recent years. Computational methods have been developed to assist dermatologists in early diagnosis of skin cancer. Computational analysis of skin lesion images has become a challenging research area due to the difficulty in discerning some types of skin lesions. A novel computational approach is presented for extracting skin lesion features from images based on asymmetry, border, colour and texture analysis, in order to diagnose skin lesion types. The approach is based on an anisotropic diffusion filter, an active contour model without edges and a support vector machine. Experiments were performed regarding the segmentation and classification of pigmented skin lesions in macroscopic images, with the results obtained being very promising.
Background and Objectives:The number of deaths worldwide due to melanoma has risen in recent times, in part because melanoma is the most aggressive type of skin cancer. Computational systems have been developed to assist dermatologists in early diagnosis of skin cancer, or even to monitor skin lesions. However, there still remains a challenge to improve classifiers for the diagnosis of such skin lesions. The main objective of this article is to evaluate different ensemble classification models based on input feature manipulation to diagnose skin lesions. Methods: Input feature manipulation processes are based on feature subset selections from shape properties, colour variation and texture analysis to generate diversity for the ensemble models. Three subset selection models are presented here: 1) a subset selection model based on specific feature groups, 2) a correlation-based subset selection model, and 3) a subset selection model based on feature selection algorithms. Each ensemble classification model is generated using an optimum-path forest classifier and integrated with a majority voting strategy. The proposed models were applied on a set of 1104 dermoscopic images using a crossvalidation procedure. Results: The best results were obtained by the first ensemble classification model that generates a feature subset ensemble based on specific feature groups. The skin lesion diagnosis computational system achieved 94.3% accuracy, 91.8% sensitivity and 96.7% specificity.
Conclusions:The input feature manipulation process based on specific feature subsets generated the greatest diversity for the ensemble classification model with very promising results.
There has been an alarming increase in the number of skin cancer cases worldwide in recent years, which has raised interest in computational systems for automatic diagnosis to assist early diagnosis and prevention. Feature extraction to describe skin lesions is a challenging research area due to the difficulty in selecting meaningful features. The main objective of this work is the find the best combination of features, based on shape properties, colour variation and texture analysis, to be extracted using various feature extraction methods. Several colour spaces are used for the extraction of both colour-and texturerelated features. Different categories of classifiers were adopted to evaluate the proposed feature extraction step and several feature selection algorithms were compared for the classification of skin lesions. The developed skin lesion computational diagnosis system was applied to a set of 1104 dermoscopic images using a cross-validation procedure. The best results were obtained by an optimumpath forest classifier with very promising results. The proposed system achieved an accuracy of 92.3%, sensitivity of 87.5% and specificity of 97.1% when the full set of features was used. Furthermore, it achieved an accuracy of 91.6%, sensitivity of 87% and specificity of 96.2%, when 50 features were selected using a correlation-based feature selection algorithm.
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