Colon Cancer Detection Using Hybrid Features and Genetically Optimized Neural Network Classifier

Computer-assisted colon cancer detection on the histopathological images has become a tedious task due to its shape characteristics and other biological properties. The images acquired through the histopathological microscope may vary in magnifications for better visibility. This may change the morphological properties and hence an automated magnification independent colon cancer detection system is essential. The manual diagnosis of colon biopsy images is subjective, sluggish, laborious leading to nonconformity between histopathologists due to visual evaluation at various microscopic magnifications. Automatic detection of colon across image magnifications is challenging due to many aspects like tailored segmentation and varying features. This demands techniques that take advantage of the textural, color, and geometric properties of colon tissue. This work exhibits a segmentation approach based on the morphological features derived from the segmented region. Gabor Wavelet, Harris Corner, and DWT-LBP coefficients are extracted as it should not be dependent on the spatial domain with respect to the magnification. These features are fed to the Genetically Optimized Neural Network classifier to classify them as normal and malignant ones. Here, the genetic algorithm is used to learn the best hyper-parameters for a neural network.