Background: Constructing a medical image feature database according to the category of disease can achieve a quick retrieval of images with similar pathological features. Therefore, this approach has important application values in the fields such as auxiliary diagnosis, teaching, research, and telemedicine.
Methods: Based on the deep convolutional neural network, an image classifier applicable to brain disease was designed to distinguish between the image features of the different brain diseases with similar anatomical structures. Through the extraction and analysis of visual features, the images were labelled with the corresponding semantic features of a specific disease category, which can establish an association between the visual features of brain images and the semantic features of the category of disease which will permit to construct a disease category feature database of brain images.
Results: Based on the similarity measurement and the matching strategy of high-dimensional visual feature, a high-precision retrieval of brain image with semantics category was achieved, and the constructed disease category feature database of brain image was tested and evaluated through large numbers of pathological image retrieval experiments, the accuracy and the effectiveness of the proposed approach was verified.
Conclusion: The disease category feature database of brain image constructed by the proposed approach achieved a quick and effective retrieval of images with similar pathological features, which is beneficial to the categorization and analysis of intractable brain diseases. This provides an effective application tool such as case-based image data management, evidence-based medicine and clinical decision support.