Classifier Approaches for Liver Steatosis using Ultrasound Images

This paper presents a semi-automatic classification approach to evaluate steatotic liver tissues using B-scan ultrasound images. Several features have been extracted and used in three different classifiers, such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Support Vector Machines (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN). The classifiers were trained using the 10-cross validation method. A feature selection method based on stepwise regression was also exploited resulting in better accuracy predictions. The results showed that the SVM have a slightly higher performance than the kNN and the ANN, appearing as the most relevant one to be applied to the discrimination of pathologic tissues in clinical practice.