A hyperspectral imaging system to measure and analyze the reflectance spectra of the human tongue with high spatial resolution is proposed for tongue tumor detection. To achieve fast and accurate performance for detecting tongue tumors, reflectance data were collected using spectral acousto-optic tunable filters and a spectral adapter, and sparse representation was used for the data analysis algorithm. Based on the tumor image database, a recognition rate of 96.5% was achieved. The experimental results show that hyperspectral imaging for tongue tumor diagnosis, together with the spectroscopic classification method provide a new approach for the noninvasive computer-aided diagnosis of tongue tumors.
Keywords: medical hyperspectral imaging; sparse representation; tongue tumor detection.