Dermoscopy Image Analysis

Dermoscopy is a noninvasive skin imaging technique that uses optical magnification and either liquid immersion or cross-polarized lighting to make subsurface structures more easily visible when compared to conventional clinical images. It allows for the identification of dozens of morphological features that are particularly important in identifying malignant melanoma.

Dermoscopy Image Analysis summarises the state of the art of the computerised analysis of dermoscopy images. The book begins by discussing the influence of colour normalisation on classification accuracy and then:

• Investigates gray-world, max-RGB, and shades-of-gray colour constancy algorithms, showing significant gains in sensitivity and specificity on a heterogeneous set of images.
• Proposes a new colour space that highlights the distribution of underlying melanin and haemoglobin colour pigments, leading to more accurate classification and border detection results.
• Determines that the latest border detection algorithms can achieve a level of agreement that is only slightly lower than the level of agreement among experienced dermatologists.
• Provides a comprehensive review of various methods for border detection, pigment network extraction, global pattern extraction, streak detection, and perceptually significant colour detection.
• Details a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system for melanomas that features an inexpensive acquisition tool, clinically meaningful features, and interpretable classification feedback.
• Presents a highly scalable CAD system implemented in the MapReduce framework, a novel CAD system for melanomas, and an overview of dermatological image databases.
• Describes projects that made use of a publicly available database of dermoscopy images, which contains 200 high-quality images along with their medical annotations.

Dermoscopy Image Analysis not only showcases recent advances but also explores future directions for this exciting subfield of medical image analysis, covering dermoscopy image analysis from preprocessing to classification.