Efficient epidermis segmentation for whole slide skin histopathological images

In order to develop a computer-aided diagnosis system for histopathological skin cancer diagnosis, segmentation of the epidermis area is the very first and crucial step. An improved computer-aided epidermis segmentation technique for the whole slide skin histopathological image is proposed in this paper. The proposed technique first obtains an initial segmentation result with the help of global thresholding and shape analysis. A template matching method, with adaptive template intensity value, is then applied. Finally, a threshold is calculated based on the probability density function of the processed image after template matching. The threshold is then used to obtain the final segmentation result. Experimental results show that the proposed technique overcomes the limitation of the existing technique and provides a superior performance with sensitivity at 97.99%, and precision at 96.00%.