Colour histogram analysis for melanoma discrimination in clinical images

Abstract

Background-Malignant melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, has a good prognosis if treated in the curable early stages. Colour provides critical discriminating information for the diagnosis of malignant melanoma.

A fuzzy-based histogram analysis technique for skin lesion discrimination in dermatology clinical images

“…The circular region neighbors the skin lesion with origin at the lesion centroid. The surrounding skin region size is determined as a function of the skin lesion size [17,22]. The average surrounding skin color (r skin , g skin , b skin ) is computed within the circular region that is outside of the lesion, excluding the non-skin-colored pixels.…”

“…The percent melanoma color feature [16,17] is used as a benchmark for comparing the fuzzy ratio-based feature. To compute this feature, training images are used to populate the relative color histogram one image at a time.…”

“…Color quantization for the different color shades examined in [14] was performed using the median cut color quantization algorithm [15]. Melanoma detection has also been performed based on probability analysis for three classes of colors (benign, melanoma and other colors) found from relative color histograms [16,17]. Relative color histogram region growing and neighborhood color clustering analysis have also been explored [16].…”

“…In this study, a fuzzy logic-based approach for skin lesion color analysis is investigated for differentiating benign skin lesions from melanomas in clinical images. A fusion technique is also presented for enhancing melanoma discrimination that combines the color feature generated from the fuzzy logic approach with the percent melanoma color determined by previous research using the same color histogram analysis technique [16,17].…”

“…The relative color histogram techniques [9,16,17] supply the foundation for the fuzzy-based histogram analysis technique presented in this research. Specifically, benign skin lesion color histogram analysis provides the basis for expressing benign skin lesion color using a fuzzy set analysis for differentiating benign skin lesions from melanomas.…”