Fundamentals of Texture Processing for Biomedical Image Analysis A General Definition and Problem Formulation

This chapter aims to provide an overview of the foundations of texture processing for biomedical image analysis. Its purpose is to define precisely what biomedical texture is, how is it different from general texture information considered in computer vision, and what is the general problem formulation to translate 2D and 3D textured patterns from biomedical images to visually and biologically relevant measurements. First, a formal definition of biomedical texture information is proposed from both perceptual andmathematical point of views. Second, a general problem formulation for biomedical texture analysis is introduced, considering that any approach can be characterized as a set of local texture operators and regional aggregation functions. The operators allow locally isolating desired texture information in terms of spatial scales and directions of a texture image. The type of desirable operator invariances are discussed, and are found to be different from photographic image analysis. Scalar-valued texture measurements are obtained by aggregating operator’s response maps over regions of interest.