Classification of endomicroscopic images of the lung based on random subwindows and extra-trees.

Abstract

Recently, the in vivo imaging of pulmonary alveoli was made possible thanks to confocal microscopy. For these images, we wish to aid the clinician by developing a computer-aided diagnosis system, able to discriminate between healthy and pathological subjects. The lack of expertise currently available on these images has first led us to choose a generic approach, based on pixel-value description of randomly extracted subwindows and decision tree ensemble for classification (extra-trees). In order to deal with the great complexity of our images, we adapt this method by introducing a texture-based description of the subwindows, based on local binary patterns. We show through our experimental protocol that this adaptation is a promising way to classify fibered confocal fluorescence microscopy images. In addition, we introduce a rejection mechanism on the classifier output to prevent nondetection errors.