Classification of hepatic lesions from CT images using texture features and neural networks

In this paper a computer-aided diagnostic system for the classification of hepatic lesions from Computed Tomography (CT) images is presented. Regions of Interest (ROI's) taken from non-enhanced CT images of normal liver, hepatic cysts, hemangiomas, and hepatocellular carcinomas (a total of 147 samples), have been used as input to the system. The system consists of two levels: the feature extraction and the classification levels. The feature extraction level calculates the average grey scale and 48 texture characteristics, which are derived from the spatial grey-level co-occurrence matrices, obtained from the ROI's. The classifier level consists of three sequentially placed feed-forward Neural Networks (NN's), which are activated sequentially. The first NN classifies into normal or pathological liver regions. The pathological liver regions are classified by the second NN into cysts or "other disease". The third NN classifies "other disease" into hemangiomas and hepatocellular carcinomas. In order to enhance the performance of the classifier and improve the execution time, the dimensionality of the initial feature vector has been reduced using the sequential forward floating selection method for each individual NN input vector. A total classification rate of 98% has been achieved.