Segmentation of sputum cell image for early lung cancer detection

Lung cancer has been the largest cause of cancer deaths worldwide with an overall 5-year survival rate of only 15%. Its early detection significantly increases the chances of an effective treatment. To that end, computer-aided diagnosis system using images of sputum stained smears has been an attractive approach due to its practicality, low cost, and invasiveness. In this context, we present a framework for the detection and segmentation of sputum cells in sputum images using respectively, a Bayesian classification and mean shift segmentation. Our methods are validated and compared with an other competitive technique via a series of experimentation conducted with a data set of 88 images.