Texture in skin images: comparison of three methods to determine smoothness

Smooth texture, a critical feature in skin tumor diagnosis, is analyzed using three texture measurement methods. A dermatologist classified 1290 small blocks within 42 tumor images as smooth, partially smooth, or nonsmooth. Texture discriminatory power of three methods were compared: the neighboring gray-level dependence matrix (NGLDM) method of Sun and Wee, the circular symmetric autoregressive random field model of Kashyap and Khotanzad, and a new peak-variance method. The texture analysis method that allows best prediction of smoothness for our tumor domain is the NGLDM method, affording 98% correct prediction of a smooth block with 21% false positives. We discuss applicability of texture analysis to dermatology.