A CBIR system for locating and retrieving pigment network in dermoscopy images using dermoscopy interest point detection

We designed a content based image retrieval (CBIR) system for dermoscopic images focusing on images with pigment networks. The system locates and matches a query image that has a pigment network with the most similar images containing pigment networks in a database of dermoscopic images. Dermoscopy interest points in the query image are detected and a vector of 128 features is extracted as the descriptor from each keypoint. Then, the descriptors are matched according to our matching algorithm to similar features arising in the database images. This leads to a meaningful matching as we are matching similar dermoscopy structures with each other. The performance of the system has been tested on more than 1000 images. Results show that our system will locate and retrieve similar images with pigment networks, with accuracy > 75.4%. This system can help physicians in diagnosis as they are shown similar looking dermoscopy images with known pathology.