Background: Cervical malignancy is considered among the most perilous cancers affecting women in numerous East African and South Asian nations, both in terms of its prevalence and fatality rates.
Objective: This research aims to propose an efficient automated system for the segmentation of cancerous regions in cervical images.
Methods: The proposed techniques encompass preprocessing, feature extraction with an optimized feature set, classification, and segmentation. The original cervical image undergoes smoothing using the Gaussian Filter technique, followed by the extraction of Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) features from the enhanced cervical images. LBP features capture pixel relationships within a mask window, while GLCM features quantify energy metrics across all pixels in the images. These features serve to distinguish normal cervical images from abnormal ones. The extracted features are optimized using Genetic Algorithm (GA) as an optimization method, and the optimized sets of features are classified using the Co-Active Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (CANFIS) classification method. Subsequently, a morphological segmentation technique is employed to categorize irregular cervical images, identifying and segmenting malignant regions within them.
Results: The proposed approach achieved a sensitivity of 99.09%, specificity of 99.39%, and accuracy of 99.36%.
Conclusion: The proposed approach demonstrated superior performance compared to state-of-the-art techniques, and the results have been validated by expert radiologists.
Keywords: Cervical cancer; classification; features; gaussian filter; genetic algorithm; optimization.