GRD Journals | Global Research and Development Journal for Engineering | International Conference on Innovations in Engineering and Technology

(ICIET) - 2016 | July 2016

e-ISSN: 2455-5703

Analysing the Performance of Classifiers for the

Detection of Skin Cancer with Dermoscopic
Images
1Kavimathi.P 2Sivagnanasubramanian.S.P
1,2

1,2

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

Sri Venkateswara College Of Engineering, Pennalur, Sriperumbudur 602117 India
Abstract

Skin cancer is one of the major causes of deaths in recent days. Early detection of skin cancer reduces death at higher rate.
Ceroscopy is one of the major modalities used in diagnosis of skin lesions. Skin lesions are of different types. Among them the
most common types of skin lesion found in human are melanoma, basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma
(SCC).The accurate diagnosis information cannot be obtained by human interpretation. In order to overcome the error due to
human interpretation an efficient computerized image analysis system has been developed. The proposed image analysis system
consists of preprocessing, lesion segmentation, feature extraction and classification. In classification, different types of classifiers
such as support vector machine (SVM), probabilistic neural network (PNN) and adaptive neurofuzzy inference system (ANFIS)
are applied to classify the skin cancer types and their performance is compared using the evaluated parameters.
Keyword- Skin cancer, Feature extraction, Adaptive Neurofuzzy inference system, Thresholding
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years skin cancer is identified as one of the major causes of death. The skin lesions are of different types but the most
common types of skin lesions are basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and melanoma. Basal cell
carcinoma is the most common form of skin cancer. It appears as a small raised bump which has a pearly appearance. It occurs in
areas of skin which received more exposure to sunlight. Squamous cell carcinoma occurs as a red bump that does not heal.
Melanoma is the deadliest cancer which grows rapidly with different colors and abnormal shapes. Among these three types,
melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. The deadliest form of skin cancer. The death due to melanoma is increasing at an
alarming rate of 3% per year. The death rate due to skin cancer can be reduced at higher rate by early detection. One of the major
tool to detect skin lesion is dermoscopy. Dermoscopy refers to the examination of skin using skin surface microscopy. Dermoscopy
is mainly used in the diagnosis of pigmented skin lesions. The colours found in pigmented skin lesions are black, brown, red, blue,
grey, yellow and white. Using dermo copy, the lesion pigmentation is evaluated in terms of colour and structure. The pigmented
skin lesions are of different types. Diagnosis helps in easy and efficient detection of melanoma.

II. RELATED WORKS

Zhou et al. implemented automatic hair detection using curvilinear analysis. By using feature guided exemplar-based inpainting
the artifact pixels were replaced. This algorithm can be applied only to dark hair.
Karargyris et al.implemented advanced image processing mobile application for monitoring skin cancer.An inexpensive accessory
was used to improve the quality of images. But their image database was too small containing 6 images of benign and 6 images of
suspicious.
Sookpotharom Support conducted a technical survey to identify the best performing components involved in the BOF
model and design. Image border detection is an important step to help the physicians to identify the skin lesions in thermoscopic
images.
Mahmoud proposed an automatic skin cancer classification system. The proposed system includes preprocessing to
enhance the image. Two segmentation methods used to segment the skin lesion. The features used for classification is the
coefficients created by Wavelet decompositions and simple wrapper curvelet.
Black ledge presented an overview of a new web-based technology for screening of skin cancer. The technology is based
on an expert system designed to classify moles through an analysis of a good quality digital image uploaded by the user of the
system. The technology is an example of an intensive application and service in the area of Health Informatics and has been
developed as a personalized e-Health Service.

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Analysing the Performance of Classifiers for the Detection of Skin Cancer with Dermoscopic Images
(GRDJE / CONFERENCE / ICIET - 2016 / 072)

III. METHODOLOGY
The methodology block is given in below fig.1 which describes the flow of work to be followed in the diagnosis of skin cancer.

Fig. 1: Flow chart of proposed image analysis system

Initially the input image is taken for preprocessing .The preprocessing is the process of removal of noise and enhancing
the image for furtherprocess. The dermoscopy images may have noise in the form of hair, bubbles,etc. In order to remove those
noises and enhance the image the preprocessing step is used.After preprocessing, the segmentation is used to segment the lesion
from background. The feature is extracted from the segmented lesion and its given as input to the classifier.Finally the classifier
classifies the image as BCC or SCC or melanoma.
A. Preprocessing
Image preprocessing is an important step in the diagnosis of skin lesions. Because preprocessing is followed by segmentation.
Segmentation is the crucial step itself that will affect the further processes including the final diagnosis.The dermoscopy image
may consist of some artifacts such as hairs, bubbles,etc. The presence of hair in the image may disturb the identification of skin
lesions. For these reasons, preprocessing is considered as the important step. In the proposed system the morphological closing
operation is applied to the dermoscopic images to exclude the hair. After excluding the hair, the missing hair gap position is filled
using bicubic interpolation. The wiener filter is applied to the hair excluded image to smoothen the noise and finally the image is
enhanced using histogram equalization followed by morphological closing operation.

Fig. 2: Original image with hair

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Analysing the Performance of Classifiers for the Detection of Skin Cancer with Dermoscopic Images
(GRDJE / CONFERENCE / ICIET - 2016 / 072)

Fig. 3: Acquired image after excluding hair

B. Lesion Segmentation
Segmentation is the process of segmenting the skin lesion from the background. Otsus segmentation is the method used in
segmenting the pigmented lesion from the background in the proposed system. Otsus method is the thresholding method which is
fully unsupervised. After applying Otsus segmentation the edges in the segmented skin lesion is smoothen by morphological
closing and opening operation.

Fig .4: Segmented Image

C. Feature Extraction
Feature extraction is the important tool used in analyzing and exploring the images. Each skin lesion has its unique feature. With
the help of extracted features the classification can be performed efficiently because classification completely depends on the
extracted features.The extracted features are mean, standard deviation and shape features. The mean and standard deviation
provides information about the pigmentation of skin between the lesion and surrounding skin.
D. Classification
Classification is the data analysis method used to predict the categorical data.Classification incorporates two process such as
training and the testing .In training phase the pre-determined data and its associated class labels are used for classification.Fig.5
shows the testing and training phases of classification.

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Analysing the Performance of Classifiers for the Detection of Skin Cancer with Dermoscopic Images
(GRDJE / CONFERENCE / ICIET - 2016 / 072)

Fig. 5: Training and Testing phase

In this paper three types of classifiers such as SVM, PNN and ANFIS are used to classify the given input dermoscopic image
as BCC or SCC or Melanoma.
E. Using Support Vector Machine
Support vector machines are supervised learning models with associated learning algorithms that analyze data used for
classification and regression analysis. SVM can efficiently perform non-linear classification similar to linear classification with
the help of kernel trick. The clustering algorithm that provides improvement to the support vector machine is known as support
vector clustering. Support vector machine uses hyper plane.
F. Using Probabilistic Neural Network
Probabilistic neural network is closely related to parzen window pdf estimator. PNN consist of four layers. Architecture of PNN
is shown in fig .6.The input nodes are the set of measurements. The second layer consists of Gaussian functions formed using the
given set of data points as centers. Averaging operation of the outputs from second layer is performed by the third layer. Finally
the fourth layer performs a vote, selecting the largest value.

Fig. 6: PNN Architecture

G. Using Adaptive Neuro fuzzy Inference System

The ANFIS network consists of two parts. The first part is antecedent part and the second is the conclusion part.These two parts
are connected to each other in network form by rules.Fig.7 shows the structure of ANFIS.It consist of five layers. The first layer
performs fuzzification process, second layer performs the fuzzy AND of the antecedent part of the fuzzy rules. Normalizations of
membership functions (MFs) are performed by third layer. The fourth layer executes the fuzzy rules and the last layer computes
the output of fuzzy system by summing up the outputs of fourth layer.
The feed forward equation of ANFIS is given as:

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Analysing the Performance of Classifiers for the Detection of Skin Cancer with Dermoscopic Images
(GRDJE / CONFERENCE / ICIET - 2016 / 072)

Fig. 7: ANFIS Architecture

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In the proposed system three types of classifiers such as SVM,PNN and ANFIS are tested on a dataset containing 200 images
incorporating three types of skin lesions such as BCC,SCC and melanoma. The performance of these classifiers is determined
based on the evaluated parameters. The parameters such as sensitivity,specificity and accuracy are calculated for each classifier.
These parameters can be evaluated using the formula given below:
Sensitivity=TP/(TP+FN)(4)
Specificity=TN/(TN+FP)(5)
Accuracy=(TP+TN)/(TP+TN+FP+FN)(6)
CLASSIFIERS

SENSITIVITY
(%)

SPECIFICITY
(%)

ACCURACY
(%)

72

80

76

80

80

80

SVM
PNN
ANFIS
90
85
Table 1: Evaluated parameters

88

Fig. 8: Performance comparison of three classifiers

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Analysing the Performance of Classifiers for the Detection of Skin Cancer with Dermoscopic Images
(GRDJE / CONFERENCE / ICIET - 2016 / 072)

V. CONCLUSION
An image analysis system has been designed with efficient algorithms to detect the dermoscopy images. The diagnosing
methodology uses digital image processing techniques and three different types of classifiers are applied to the dataset containing
200 images that includes three types of skin lesions.The performances of these classifiers are measured using the parameters such
as sensitivity,specificity and accuracy.The experimental results shows that ANFIS performs better compared to SVM and PNN
classifier.

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