Contourlet transform for texture representation of ultrasound thyroid images

Abstract

Texture representation of ultrasound (US) images is currently considered a major issue in medical image analysis. This paper investigates the texture representation of thyroid tissue via features based on the Contourlet Transform (CT) using different types of filter banks. A variety of statistical texture features based on CT coefficients, have been considered through a selection schema. The Sequential Float Feature Selection (SFFS) algorithm with a k-NN classifier has been applied in order to investigate the most representative set of CT features. For the experimental evaluation a set of normal and nodular ultrasound thyroid textures have been utilized. The maximum classification accuracy was 93%, showing that CT based texture features can be successfully applied for the representation of different types of texture in US thyroid images. © 2010 IFIP.