Epidermis segmentation in skin histopathological images based on thickness measurement and k-means algorithm

Abstract

Automatic segmentation of the epidermis area in skin histopathological images is an essential step for computer-aided diagnosis of various skin cancers. This paper presents a robust technique for epidermis segmentation in the whole slide skin histopathological images. The proposed technique first performs a coarse epidermis segmentation using global thresholding and shape analysis. The epidermis thickness is then measured by a series of line segments perpendicular to the main axis of the initially segmented epidermis mask. If the segmented epidermis mask has a thickness greater than a predefined threshold, the segmentation is assumed to be inaccurate. A second pass of fine segmentation using k-means algorithm is then carried out over these coarsely segmented result to enhance the performance. Experimental results on 64 different skin histopathological images show that the proposed technique provides a superior performance compared to the existing techniques.