title: An effective hair removal algorithm for dermoscopy images.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Dermoscopy is one of the major imaging modalities used in the diagnosis of pigmented skin lesions. Due to the difficulty and subjectivity of human interpretation, computerized image analysis techniques have become important tools in this research area. Hair removal from skin lesion images is one of the key problems for the precise segmentation and analysis of the skin lesions. In this study, we present a new scheme that automatically detects and removes hairs from dermoscopy images.
  
  
  METHODS
  The proposed algorithm includes two steps: firstly, light and dark hairs and ruler marking are segmented through adaptive canny edge detector and refinement by morphological operators. Secondly, the hairs are repaired based on multi-resolution coherence transport inpainting.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The algorithm was applied to 50 dermoscopy images. To estimate the accuracy of the proposed hair detection algorithm, quantitative analysis was performed using TDR, FPR, and DA metrics. Moreover, to evaluate the performance of the proposed hair repaired algorithm, three statistical metrics namely entropy, standard deviation, and co-occurrence matrix were used.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is highly accurate and able to detect and repair the hair pixels with few errors. In addition, the segmentation veracity of the skin lesion is effectively improved after our proposed hair removal algorithm.
authors.affiliation: Medical Physics Research Center, Medical Physics Department, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran.
authors.forename: Mohammad Taghi Bahreyni
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Toossi
authors.forename: Hamid Reza
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Pourreza
authors.forename: Hoda
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zare
authors.forename: Mohamad-Hoseyn
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Sigari
authors.forename: Pouran
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Layegh
authors.forename: Abbas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Azimi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D046169:Dermoscopy / Q000379:methods*; D006197:Hair / Q000166:cytology*; 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; D012867:Skin / Q000166:cytology*; D013382:Subtraction Technique
keywords: dermoscopy images; hair detection; hair removal; melanoma; skin lesions