Computer-aided screening system for cervical precancerous cells based on field emission scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive x-ray images and spectra

Abstract

The capability of field emission scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (FE-SEM/EDX) to scan material structures at the microlevel and characterize the material with its elemental properties has inspired this research, which has developed an FE-SEM/EDX-based cervical cancer screening system. The developed computer-aided screening system consisted of two parts, which were the automatic features of extraction and classification. For the automatic features extraction algorithm, the image and spectra of cervical cells features extraction algorithm for extracting the discriminant features of FE-SEM/EDX data was introduced. The system automatically extracted two types of features based on FE-SEM/EDX images and FE-SEM/EDX spectra. Textural features were extracted from the FE-SEM/EDX image using a gray level co-occurrence matrix technique, while the FE-SEM/EDX spectra features were calculated based on peak heights and corrected area under the peaks using an algorithm. A discriminant analysis technique was employed to predict the cervical precancerous stage into three classes: normal, low-grade intraepithelial squamous lesion (LSIL), and high-grade intraepithelial squamous lesion (HSIL). The capability of the developed screening system was tested using 700 FE-SEM/EDX spectra (300 normal, 200 LSIL, and 200 HSIL cases). The accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity performances were 98.2%, 99.0%, and 98.0%, respectively.