Authors:
José C. R. Seabra
and
Ana L. N. Fred
Affiliation:
Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Biometrics, Thyroid gland, Ultrasound, Acoustic impedance, Texture, Diagnosis.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications
;
Applications and Services
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Biomedical Signal Processing
;
Biometrics
;
Biometrics and Pattern Recognition
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Medical Image Detection, Acquisition, Analysis and Processing
;
Multimedia
;
Multimedia Signal Processing
;
Pattern Recognition
;
Telecommunications
Abstract:
This paper proposes a biometric system based on features extracted from the thyroid tissue accessed through 2D ultrasound. Tissue echo-morphology, which accounts for the intensity (echogenicity), texture and structure has started to be used as a relevant parameter in a clinical setting. In this paper, features related to texture, morphology and tissue reflectivity are extracted from the ultrasound images and the most discriminant ones are selected as an input for a prototype biometric identification system. Several classifiers were tested, with the best results (90% identification rate) being achieved with the maximum a posteriori classifier. Another classifier which only takes into account the reflectivity parameter achieved a reasonable identification rate of 70%. This suggests that the acoustic impedance (reflectivity) of the tissue is a good parameter to discriminate between individuals. This paper shows the effectiveness of the proposed classification, which can be used not only
as a new biometric modality but also as a diagnostic tool.
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