Lung cancer classification using neural networks for CT images

Abstract Early detection of cancer is the most promising way to enhance a patient's chance for survival. This paper presents a computer aided classification method in computed tomography (CT) images of lungs developed using artificial neural network. The entire lung is segmented from the CT images and the parameters are calculated from the segmented image. The statistical parameters like mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, fifth central moment and sixth central moment are used for classification. The classification process is done by feed forward and feed forward back propagation neural networks. Compared to feed forward networks the feed forward back propagation network gives better classification. The parameter skewness gives the maximum classification accuracy. Among the already available thirteen training functions of back propagation neural network, the Traingdx function gives the maximum classification accuracy of 91.1%. Two new training functions are proposed in this paper. The results show that the proposed training function 1 gives an accuracy of 93.3%, specificity of 100% and sensitivity of 91.4% and a mean square error of 0.998. The proposed training function 2 gives a classification accuracy of 93.3% and minimum mean square error of 0.0942.