Advances in texture analysis for emphysema classification

Abstract

In recent years, with the advent of High-resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT), there has been an increased interest for diagnosing Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which is commonly presented as emphysema. Since low-attenuation areas in HRCT images describe different emphysema patterns, the discrimination problem should focus on the characterization of both local intensities and global spatial variations. We propose a novel texture-based classification framework using complex Gabor filters and local binary patterns. We also analyzed a set of global and local texture descriptors to characterize emphysema morphology. The results have shown the effectiveness of our proposal and that the combination of descriptors provides robust features that lead to an improvement in the classification rate. © Springer-Verlag 2013.