title: Approximate lesion localization in dermoscopy images.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Dermoscopy is one of the major imaging modalities used in the diagnosis of melanoma and other pigmented skin lesions. Because of the difficulty and subjectivity of human interpretation, automated analysis of dermoscopy images has become an important research area. Border detection is often the first step in this analysis.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this article, we present an approximate lesion localization method that serves as a preprocessing step for detecting borders in dermoscopy images. In this method, first the black frame around the image is removed using an iterative algorithm. The approximate location of the lesion is then determined using an ensemble of thresholding algorithms.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The method is tested on a set of 428 dermoscopy images. The localization error is quantified by a metric that uses dermatologist-determined borders as the ground truth.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results demonstrate that the method presented here achieves both fast and accurate localization of lesions in dermoscopy images.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Louisiana State University, Technology Center 206, One University Place, Shreveport, LA 71115, USA. ecelebi@Isus.edu
authors.forename: M Emre
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Celebi
authors.forename: Hitoshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Iyatomi
authors.forename: Gerald
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schaefer
authors.forename: William V
authors.initials: WV
authors.lastname: Stoecker
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D046169:Dermoscopy / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*