Melanoma Detection in Dermoscopic Images Using a Cellular Automata Classifier

Abstract

Any cancer type is one of the leading death causes around the world. Skin cancer is a condition where malignant cells are formed in the tissues of the skin, such as melanoma, known as the most aggressive and deadly skin cancer type. The mortality rates of melanoma are associated with its high potential for metastasis in later stages, spreading to other body sites such as the lungs, bones, or the brain. Thus, early detection and diagnosis are closely related to survival rates. Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems carry out a pre-diagnosis of a skin lesion based on clinical criteria or global patterns associated with its structure. A CAD system is essentially composed by three modules: (i) lesion segmentation, (ii) feature extraction, and (iii) classification. In this work, a methodology is proposed for a CAD system development that detects global patterns using texture descriptors based on statistical measurements that allow melanoma detection from dermoscopic images. Image analysis was carried out using spatial domain methods, statistical measurements were used for feature extraction, and a classifier based on cellular automata (ACA) was used for classification. The proposed model was applied to dermoscopic images obtained from the PH2 database, and it was compared with other models using accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity as metrics. With the proposed model, values of 0.978, 0.944, and 0.987 of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity, respectively, were obtained. The results of the evaluated metrics show that the proposed method is more effective than other state-of-the-art methods for melanoma detection in dermoscopic images.