Comparative analysis of selected classifiers in posterior cruciate ligaments computer aided diagnosis

A study on computer aided diagnosis of posterior cruciate ligaments is presented in this paper. The diagnosis relies on T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. During the image analysis stage, the ligament region is automatically detected, localized, and extracted using fuzzy segmentation methods. Eight geometric features are defined for the ligament object. With a clinical reference database containing 107 cases of both healthy and pathological cases, a Fisher linear discriminant is used to select 4 most distinctive features. At the classification stage we employ five different soft computing classifiers to evaluate the feature vector suitability for the computerized ligament diagnosis. Among the classifiers we introduce and specify the particle swarm optimization based Sugeno-type fuzzy inference system and compare its performance to other established classification systems. The classification accuracy metrics: sensitivity, specificity, and Dice index all exceed 90% for each classifier under consideration, indicating high level of the proposed feature vector relevance in the computer aided ligaments diagnosis.