Performance Evaluation of Support Vector Machine and Artificial Neural Network in the Classification of Liver Cirhosis and
Hemachromatosis
O. D. Fenwaa*, F.A. Ajalab* and A. M. Akuc*
ab
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, LAUTECH, P.M.B 4000, Ogbomoso, Nigeria.
c
Department of Chemical Engineering, LAUTECH, P.M.B. 4000, Ogbomoso, Nigeria.
*
( Corresponding authors: fenwadeborah@yahoo.com ,faajala@lautech.edu.ng, akumichael2011@gmail.com )
Abstract- Medical image classification scheme has been on
the increase in order to help physicians, and medical
practitioners in their evaluation and analysis of diseases.
Several classification schemes such as Artificial Neural
Network (ANN), Bayes Classification, Support Vector
Machine (SVM), K-Means Nearest Neighbor have been used.
In this paper, we evaluate and compared the performance of
ANN and SVM by analyzing Cirrhosis and Hemachromatosis-
two major diseases of the liver. Corresponding results showed
support vector machine is of better classification strength than
neural network by achieving a percentage accuracy of 87.5%,
while ANN was 71.25%
Keywords -Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector
Machine, Cirrhosis, Hemachromatosis, Medical Images.
1. INTRODUCTION
The liver is unique among the body’s vital organs in
that it can regenerate, or grow back cells that have been
destroyed by some short-term injury or disease. Liver cancer
is one of the most life-threatening solid tumors worldwide
with more than one million cases diagnosed each year.
Hemochromatosis is a major disease of the liver which occurs
as a result of too much iron in the human body. It is also called
iron overload. The symptoms include: abdominal pain,
fatigue, generalized darkening of skin colour (often referred to
as bronzing), joint pain, lack of energy, while liver cirrhosis
on the other hand, is scarring of the liver and poor liver
function. It is the final phase of chronic liver disease. A
number of inherited metabolic diseases can cause cirrhosis,
such as Hemochromatosis (abnormal accumulation of iron),
Wilson’s disease (inability to metabolize copper), and some
forms of alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency (inability to produce
the alpha-1-antitrypsin protein). Cirrhosis can also result from
certain autoimmune diseases in which the body’s immune
system attacks and destroys liver tissue. In some parts of the
world, parasitic infections are also a common cause. With the
technological advances of digital imaging, large collections of
medical images are generated and stored in the medical
databases. X-ray, CT, MRI, PET, ultrasound images are a
major source of functional information needed for diagnosis,
research and teaching [1]. Low level visual features such as
color, texture, shape, etc., are automatically extracted to
represent images.
Several classification schemes such as Artificial Neural
Network (ANN), Bayes classification, Support Vector
Machine (SVM), K-means Nearest Neighbor have been used.
SVM has proven its efficiency over neural networks and RBF
classifiers. Unlike neural networks, SVM model builds does
not need hypothesizing number of neurons in the middle layer
or defining the centre of Gaussian functions in RBF. SVM
uses an optimum linear separating hyper-plane to separate two
set of data in a feature space. This optimum hyper-plane is
produced by maximizing minimum margin between the
support vectors. The support vector machine operates on two
mathematical operations (steps): (1) Nonlinear mapping of an
input vector into a high-dimensional feature space that is
hidden from both the input and output. (2) Construction of an
optimal hyper-plane for separating the features discovered in
step 1.
Widely used medical Imaging Computed Tomography
modality has been applied in clinical diagnosis. CT assists
radiologists to detect and locate Pathological changes with
more accuracy. Computed tomography images can be
distinguished for different tissues according to their gray level.
These images can present information which is constructive
for medical diagnosis. The purpose of abnormality detection is
to identify the abnormality. Lot of research efforts have been
directed towards the field of medical image analysis with the
aim to assist in diagnosis and clinical studies.CAD systems are
developed to assist radiologists and increase the accuracy of
diagnosis. This paper evaluated and compared the
performance of ANN and SVM by analyzing Cirrhosis and
Hemachromatosis-two major diseases of the liver.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
[2] presented their work for classification and
segmentation of CT brain tumor images. SVM and BPN (Back
propagation Network) are used for tumor classification SVM
classification accuracy is 96%. [3] opined that the K-Nearest
Neighbor (K-NN) classification technique is the simplest
technique conceptually and computationally that provides
good classification accuracy. [4] proposed a fully automated
method for multiple sclerosis (MS) lesion segmentation in T1-
weighted MR imaging. [5] proposed approach for
classification and detection of Brain tumor using texture
features from brain MR images. [6] proposed a tumor
detection technique on CT scan images of the neck area based
on an airways symmetry evaluation within slices. According
to [7], different algorithms for threshold detection for
abnormality extraction were proposed for T1 and T2 MRI
Images. IDIS (intelligent Diagnostic Imaging System) GUI
was developed by using MATLAB tool. [8] proposed
abnormality detection from CT images of different disease. able to predict general abnormality in human brain. The model
The model was built based on decision tree classifier that is was evaluated using hold out method and N-fold evaluation.

3. METHODOLOGY

The block diagram of the proposed system showing the stages of the system development is as displayed in figure 1. The
stages are: Medical Image Acquisition; Image Preprocessing; Feature Extraction; Classification (using SVM and ANN); and
Performance Evaluation.

Medical Images Dataset

Image Preprocessing

Feature Extraction

SVM Classifier ANN Classifier

Performance
Evaluation

Figure 1: The Block Diagram of the Proposed System

3.1 Image Acquisition

Figures 2 and 3 show a typical diseased cell image of

both liver Cirrhosis and Hemachromatosis used for analysis.
The images that were used for the analysis were gotten from
online database. The acquired images were created in the
Matlab environment and the images were then called from the
database using Matlab algorithm. The figures 4 and 5 are the
segmented region of liver Cirrhosis and Hemachromatosis
which were passed into the classifiers.
Fig.4: Seg. region of liver Cirrhosis Fig.5:Segmented region
of Hemachromatosis
The segmented region shown in figures 4 and 5 were
identified using Region of Interest (ROI) and energy
minimization function and these regions were then passed into
the SVM and ANN classifiers and classification was carried
out.

3.2 Feature Extraction

The purpose of feature extraction is to reduce the
original data set by measuring certain properties of features
that distinguish on input pattern from another. These features
of both images were extracted by selecting a particular Region
of Interest (ROI) which is peculiar to both images. This region
Figure 2: Liver cirrhosis Figure 3: Hemachromatosis is gotten by minimizing the edge based function of the
selected region using Distance Regularization Set Function.
This minimization occurs as a result of reduction in energy
and volume of the selected region. The resulting image is then
filtered before being passed to the classifiers.
3.3 Classification with Neural Networks network. The neural network parameters used is as shown in
table 1. Neural network output versus targeted output is shown
Different types of Neural Networks (NN) have been in figure 7 and the neural network tool interface is given in
proposed but all of them have three things in common: the figure 8.
individual neuron, the connection between them (architecture),
and the learning algorithm. Each type restricts the kind of
connections that are possible. Figure 6 shows example of an
artificial neuron. The output of the neuron is constructed by
taking the weighted sum of the inputs called net input to a
neuron or combination function (vector-to-scalar function)
transformed by transfer function F [also called activation
function (scalar-to-scalar function)]. This transfer function
introduces nonlinearity into the system. This makes the system
so powerful. One of the most important methods to train
neural networks is Back Propagation Algorithm. It is a
systematic method of training multilayer artificial neural Figure 8: ANN Output Vs Target Output
networks.
In this work, 80 images were passed into the neural
Table 1: Neural Network Parameters
network for training while another set of 40 images were used
for testing and validation. These images were first treated, pre-
processed and segmented before being passed into the neural
Network used Back Propagation N N
Learning rule Levenberg-Marquardt
Transfer functions 1 and Tan-Sigmoid and
2 Purelin functions
Learning method Supervised
No. of inputs 5
Figure 6: Artificial Neuron [9] No of output 1
No of hidden layers 2
Network structure 5-2-1

3.4 Support Vector Machine (SVM)

SVM uses an optimum linear separating hyper plane
to separate two set of data in feature space as shown in figure
6. This optimum hyper plane is produced by maximizing
minimum margin between the two sets. Therefore the resulting
Figure 7: ANN Output Vs Target Output
hyper plane will only be dependent on border training patterns
called support vectors.The standard SVM is a linear classifier
which is composed of a set of given support vectors z and a set
of weights w. The computation for the output of a given SVM
with N support vectors z1, z2, ....,zN and weights w1, w2, ....,wN
is then given by:
F(x) = ∑N w z , x b (1)
Figure 9: Linear separation in feature space[10]
SVM maps input vectors to a higher dimensional
vector space where an optimal hyper plane is constructed [10].
The data with linear severability may be analyzed with a hyper
plane, and the linearly non separable data are analyzed with
kernel functions such as Gaussian Radial Basis Function. The
output of an SVM is a linear combination of the training 4.1.1 Total Recognition time
examples projected onto a high dimensional feature space
Recognition of images occurs when the classifier is
through the use of kernel function. For this work SVM with
able to correctly identify and acquaint itself with what it has
kernel function linear and RBF (Radial Basis Function) is used
been trained with. Recognition time plays an important role in
for classification of images into two classes namely “Liver
classification of medical images because higher recognition
Cirhosis” and “Hemachromatosis”. The labels for these
time leads to more memory consumption which could affect
classes are using ‘’1 and ‘’2 for “Normal” and
corresponding results. In the case of a lower recognition time,
“Abnormal” respectively. Classification performance results
it yields low memory which is useful and better and does not
are discussed in result section in detail. On the basis of
affect corresponding results. The support vector machine fairs
classification accuracy rate, KNN algorithm is chosen for the
better in recognition of images due to its linearity in
classification purpose.
classification and the assignment of vectors and weights to
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
corresponding images. For neural network, learning paradigms
4.1 Training Data and number of epochs assigned during classification made it
have a higher recognition time.
In this work, a total number of 80 images containing
both Liver cirrhosis and Hemachromatosis were passed into 4.2 User Interface for Classification
the neural network for training while 40 images were used for
Figure 10 shows an interactive user interface
testing and validation. The same set of images was passed into
the Support Vector Machine and Artificial Neural Network. developed on Matlab 7.10a, which is used for classification.
These images were first treated, pre-processed and segmented Image on the left shows a diseased liver–Cirrhosis and on the
before being passed into the neural network. Figures 2 and 3
right is the diseased liver-Hemachromatosis and the
show a typical image of the Liver cirrhosis and
Hemachromatosis from which features were extracted. corresponding results gotten were shown on the right hand
side of the panel. The confusion matrix generated by the SVM
and ANN are as shown in table 2 and table 3 while the
classification result is as shown in table 4.

Figure 10: User Interface for Analysis

Table 2: Confusion Matrix for SVM Table 3: Confusion Matrix for ANN

Liver Liver
Cirrhosis Hemachromatosis Total Cirhosis Hemachromatosis Total

Liver Cirhosis 35 5 40 Liver Cirhosis 27 13 40

Hemachromatosis 5 35 40 Hemachromatosis 10 30 40

Specificity = 100 Hemachromatosis), Fp is false positive (i.e. Hemachromatosis

incorrectly classified as Liver cirrhosis)
Sensitivity = 100 Tp is 35; Fn is 5; Fp is 5; Tn is 35;

Accuracy = 100 Specificity = 35/40 * 100 (for SVM)

Sensitivity = 35/40 * 100 (for SVM)

where, Tp is true positive (i.e. Liver cirrhosis classified
correctly as Liver cirrhosis), Fn is false negative (i.e. Liver Specificity = 27/40 * 100 (for ANN)
cirrhosis incorrectly classified as Hemachromatosis), Tn is
true negative (i.e. Hemachromatosis correctly classified as Sensitivity = 30/40 * 100 (for ANN)
Table 4: Classification Results

Classifier Specificity (%) Sensitivity (%) Accuracy (%) Time for Recognition (in seconds)

ANN 67.5 75.0 71.25 0.2496

SVM 87.5 87.5 87.5 0.103

The evaluation measurement results as indicated in table 4 have shown that SVM has better performance with a classification
accuracy rate of 87.5% than ANN with 71.25% accuracy.

5. CONCLUSION Detection Using K-Nearest Neighbour’’,

The support vector machine performs better than the
artificial neural network in terms of classification accuracy
and recognition time. The support vector machine has been
very useful and has shown its learning paradigm is better than
the artificial neural network. Future work can be tailored
towards evaluating SVM performance with the Bayes
classification scheme with respect to two major diseases of the
lungs.
International Journal of Advanced Computer
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