Diagnosis support apparatus for lesion, image processing method in the same apparatus, and medium storing program associated with the same method

Abstract

A diagnosis support apparatus for diagnosing a lesion based on a captured image composed of a multi-valued image, the apparatus includes a dermoscope-equipped image capturing device which captures the captured image; a storage device which stores the captured image; a display which displays the captured image stored in the storage device; and a processor which, under control of a stored program, processes the captured image stored in the storage device. The processor performs separating the captured image into a brightness component and a color information component; performing a first morphology processing which performs a dilation, an erosion, a smoothing filter processing, and subtraction processing, in this order, with respect to an image representing the brightness component, to generate a first image when acquiring a shape of regions having low pixel values from the image representing the brightness component, and extracting the image obtained as a result of the first morphology processing as a candidate region image; and performing a second morphology processing which performs an erosion, a dilation, a smoothing filter processing, and subtraction processing, in this order, with respect to an image indicating a likelihood of a region obtained from a color space composed of the brightness component and the color information component, to generate a second image when acquiring a shape of regions having high pixel values from the image indicating the likelihood of a region, and extracting the image obtained as a result of the second morphology processing as a likelihood image of a region. The display further displays the captured image having been processed by the processor.