Classification of reticular pattern and streaks in dermoscopic images based on texture analysis

The early detection of melanoma is one of the greatest challenges in clinical practice of dermatology, and the reticular pattern is one of the most important dermoscopic structures to improve melanocytic lesion diagnosis. A texture-based approach is developed for the automatic detection of reticular patterns, whose output will assist clinical decision-making. Feature selection was based on the use of two algorithms by means of the classical graylevel co-occurrence matrix and Laws energy masks optimized on a set of 104 dermoscopy images. The AdaBoost (adaptive boosting) approach to machine learning was used within this strategy. Results suggest superiority of LEM for reticular pattern detection in dermoscopic images, achieving a sensitivity of 90.16% and a specificity of 86.67%. The use of automatic classification in dermoscopy to support clinicians is a strong tool to assist diagnosis; however, the use of automatic classification as a complementary tool in clinical routine requires algorithms with high levels of sensitivity and specificity. The results presented in this work will contribute to achieving this goal.