Automatic recognition of melanoma using Support Vector Machines: A study based on Wavelet, Curvelet and color features

Abstract

This paper proposes an automated non-invasive system for skin cancer (melanoma) detection based on Support Vector Machine classification. The proposed system uses a number of features extracted from the Wavelet or the Curvelet decomposition of the grayscale skin lesion images and color features obtained from the original color images. The dataset used include both digital images and Dermoscopy images for skin lesions that are either benign or malignant. The recognition accuracy obtained by the Support Vector Machine classifier used in this experiment is 87.7.1% for the Wavelet based features and 83.6. 6% for the Curvelet based ones. The proposed system also resulted in a sensitivity of 86.4 % for the case of Wavelet and 76.9% for the case of Curvelet. It also resulted in a specificity of 88.1% for the case of Wavelet and 85.4% for the case of Curvelet. The obtained sensitivity and specificity results are comparable to those obtained by Dermatologists.