Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Melanoma is a deadly skin cancer which increases the death rate at a faster rate. In order to bring the death rate under control, melanoma should be detected at its earlier stage. To achieve this, researchers have introduced Computer aided diagnosis and adopted the same. In this technique, Segmentation is found to be one of the important steps. Many algorithms exist in practise for segmentation,where one of the important algorithms is Traditional Otsu Segmentation Algorithm. In this algorithm the major drawback is that the segmentation is improper in the presence of variable illumination. This paper proposes an algorithm “Normalised Otsu Segmentation” which overcomes the above mentioned drawback and results in an accurate segmentation. This algorithm first normalises the image to overcome variable illumination and then segments the image using Otsu algorithm. The accurate result given by this algorithm can be used in further steps to detect the lesion accurately which will provide a hand a for reducing the death rate. 
Keywords: Illumination, Melanoma, Normalisation, Otsu’s Algorithm, Segmentation