Determination of border irregularity in dermoscopic color images of pigmented skin lesions.

Abstract

Malignant melanoma, which is the most dangerous type of skin cancer, is commonly diagnosed in all people, regardless of age, gender, or race. In the last several years an increasing melanoma incidence and mortality rate has been observed worldwide. In this research we present a new approach to the detection and classification of border irregularity, one of the major parameter in a widely used diagnostic algorithm ABCD rule of dermoscopy. Accurate assessment of irregular borders is clinically important due to a significantly different occurrence in benign and malignant skin lesions. In this paper we describe a complex algorithm containing following steps: image enhancement, lesion segmentation, border irregularity detection as well as classification. The algorithm has been tested on 300 dermoscopic images and achieved a detection of 79% and classification accuracy of 90%. Compared to state-of-the-art, we obtain improved classification accuracy.