title: Computer aided measurement of melanoma depth of invasion in microscopic images.
abstract: This paper presents a novel computer aided technique for measurement of melanoma depth of invasion. Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer with worldwide increasing incidences. For a conclusive diagnosis of melanoma, skin biopsies should be examined under a microscope. Visual inspection of microscopic samples is often subjective, time-consuming, cumbersome and prone to human errors. This fact demonstrates the necessity of developing an automated method which assists pathologists in evaluating histopathological samples more accurately in the busy clinical environment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a computer-assisted diagnosis algorithm has been applied in measurement of melanoma invasion depth. The proposed method uses a clustering algorithm for granular layer extraction and a pre-trained SVM classifier for detection of malignant melanocytes. The experimental results with average error of 3.9μm demonstrate that the proposed method is reliable and effective.
authors.affiliation: Pathology Department, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan 73461-8174, Iran.
authors.forename: Mojgan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mokhtari
authors.affiliation: Digital Signal Processing Research Lab., Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran.
authors.forename: Mahdie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rezaeian
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran 15875-4413, Iran.
authors.forename: Shahriar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gharibzadeh
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran 15875-4413, Iran. Electronic address: V.malekian@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Vahid
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Malekian
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D008544:Melanocytes / Q000473:pathology / Q000648:ultrastructure; D008545:Melanoma / Q000145:classification / Q000473:pathology / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness / Q000648:ultrastructure; D012867:Skin / Q000473:pathology / Q000648:ultrastructure; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000145:classification / Q000473:pathology / Q000648:ultrastructure*
keywords: Computer-assisted diagnosis; Depth of invasion; Melanoma; SVM