A Hybrid GA-LDA Scheme for Feature Selection in Content-Based Image Retrieval

Feature selection is an important pre-processing technique in the pattern recognition domain. This article proposes a hybridization between Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) for solving the feature selection problem in Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) applied to dermatological images. In the first step, we preprocess and segment the input image, then we derive color and texture features characterizing healthy skin and the segmented skin lesion. At this stage, a binary GA is used to evolve chromosome subsets whose fitness is evaluated by a Logistic Regression classifier. The optimal identified features are then used to feed LDA for a CBIR system, based on a K-Nearest Neighbor classification. To assess the proposed approach, the authors have opted for a K-fold cross validation method on a database of 1097 images of melanomas and other skin lesions. As a result, the authors obtained a reduced number of features and an improved CBDIR system compared to PCA, LDA and ICA methods.