Measuring border irregularities of skin lesions using fractal dimensions

Vincent T. Y. Ng; Tim Kam Lee

doi:10.1117/12.253385

30 September 1996 Measuring border irregularities of skin lesions using fractal dimensions

Vincent T. Y. Ng, Tim Kam Lee

Proceedings Volume 2898, Electronic Imaging and Multimedia Systems; (1996) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.253385
Event: Photonics China '96, 1996, Beijing, China

Abstract

Malignant melanoma is the most common cancer in people less than 35 years of age and incident rates are increasing by approximately 5 percent per annum in many white populations, including British Columbia, Canada. In 1994, a clinical study has been established to digitize melanocytic lesions under a controlled environment. Lesions are digitized from patients who are referred to the Colored Pigment Lesion Clinic in the University of British Columbia. In this paper, we investigate how to use fractal dimensions (FDs) in measuring the irregularity of a skin lesion. In a previous project, we have experimented with 6 different methods to calculate fractal dimensions on a small number of images of skin lesions, and the simple box-counting method performed the best. However, the method did not exploit the intensity information of the images. With the new set of images which are digitized under the controlled environment, we utilize the differential box counting method to exploit such information. Four FD measures, including the direct FD, the horizontal and the vertical smoothing FDs, and the multi- fractal dimension of order two, are calculated based on the original color images. In addition, these 4 FD features are repeatedly calculate for the blue band of the images. This paper reports the different features through the calculations of the fractal dimensions and compares their differentiation power in the use of diagnosis of images of skin lesions.

Citation Download Citation

Vincent T. Y. Ng and Tim Kam Lee "Measuring border irregularities of skin lesions using fractal dimensions", Proc. SPIE 2898, Electronic Imaging and Multimedia Systems, (30 September 1996); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.253385

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