Calibration and segmentation of skin areas in hyperspectral imaging for the needs of dermatology.

INTRODUCTION

Among the currently known imaging methods, there exists hyperspectral imaging. This imaging fills the gap in visible light imaging with conventional, known devices that use classical CCDs. A major problem in the study of the skin is its segmentation and proper calibration of the results obtained. For this purpose, a dedicated automatic image analysis algorithm is proposed by the paper's authors.

MATERIAL AND METHOD

The developed algorithm was tested on data acquired with the Specim camera. Images were related to different body areas of healthy patients. The resulting data were anonymized and stored in the output format, source dat (ENVI File) and raw. The frequency λ of the data obtained ranged from 397 to 1030 nm. Each image was recorded every 0.79 nm, which in total gave 800 2D images for each subject. A total of 36'000 2D images in dat format and the same number of images in the raw format were obtained for 45 full hyperspectral measurement sessions. As part of the paper, an image analysis algorithm using known analysis methods as well as new ones developed by the authors was proposed. Among others, filtration with a median filter, the Canny filter, conditional opening and closing operations and spectral analysis were used. The algorithm was implemented in Matlab and C and is used in practice.

RESULTS

The proposed method enables accurate segmentation for 36'000 measured 2D images at the level of 7.8%. Segmentation is carried out fully automatically based on the reference ray spectrum. In addition, brightness calibration of individual 2D images is performed for the subsequent wavelengths. For a few segmented areas, the analysis time using Intel Core i5 CPU RAM M460@2.5GHz 4GB does not exceed 10 s.

CONCLUSIONS

The obtained results confirm the usefulness of the applied method for image analysis and processing in dermatological practice. In particular, it is useful in the quantitative evaluation of skin lesions. Such analysis can be performed fully automatically without operator's intervention.