SVM with feature selection and smooth prediction in images: Application to CAD of prostate cancer

We propose a new computer-aided detection scheme for prostate cancer screening on multiparametric magnetic resonance (mp-MR) images. Based on an annotated training database of mp-MR images from thirty patients, we train a novel support vector machine (SVM)-inspired classifier which simultaneously learns an optimal linear discriminant and a subset of predictor variables (or features) that are most relevant to the classification task, while promoting spatial smoothness of the malignancy prediction maps. The approach uses a ℓ₁-norm in the regularization term of the optimization problem that rewards sparsity. Spatial smoothness is promoted via an additional cost term that encodes the spatial neighborhood of the voxels, to avoid noisy prediction maps. Experimental comparisons of the proposed ℓ₁-Smooth SVM scheme to the regular ℓ₂-SVM scheme demonstrate a clear visual and numerical gain on our clinical dataset.