Automated color normalization for dermoscopy images

Accurate color information in dermoscopy images is very important for melanoma diagnosis since inappropriate white balance or brightness in the images adversely affects the diagnostic performance. In this paper, we present an automated color normalization method for dermoscopy images of skin lesions. We develop color normalization filters based on a total of 319 images which normalize color of images using the HSV color system. We determined that the color characteristics of the peripheral part of the tumors significantly influence the color normalization and confirmed that the developed normalization filter achieved satisfactory normalization performance as evaluated by a cross-validation test.