Improvement of Features Extraction Process and Classification of Cervical Cancer for the NeuralPap System

Cervical cancer has caused many deaths each year. Screening tests, such as Pap smear test used for the detection of the precancerous stage are able to avoid the occurrence of cervical cancer. However, the Pap smear test has several disadvantages such as less effective slides preparation and human error. Therefore, a computer-aided diagnosis system is introduced as a solution to the problem. One of the diagnostic systems that has been built is NeuralPap. However, the NeuralPap performance is limited by several constraints. This research proposed several new image processing algorithms to reduce these constraints. The Adaptive Fuzzy-k-Means (AFKM) clustering algorithm is proposed to replace the Moving k-Means (MKM) to segment Pap smear images into the nucleus, cytoplasm and background regions. Next, the feature extraction algorithm based on pseudo colouring called the Pseudo Colour Feature Extraction (PCFE) manual and Semi-Automatic PCFE are designed to replace the Region Growing Based Feature Extraction (RGBFE) which uses monochromatic images. This research is a step forward compared with the NeuralPap system by proposing the feature extraction algorithm for overlapping cells by combining the concept of colour space with Semi-Automatic PCFE algorithm. In addition, this research has also suggested the AFKM algorithm as a new centre positioning algorithm for the Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Hybrid RBF (HRBF) networks replacing the MKM algorithm. The entire proposed algorithm has been proven to produce better performance than the corresponding algorithm used in the NeuralPap. In addition, the combination of all algorithms has managed to increase the accuracy of the classification of cervical cancer to 76.35%, compared with 73.40% which is obtained from the previous NeuralPap system. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.