A Comprehensive Review of Medical Image-processing Techniques for Thyroid Disorders

Image processing techniques are extensively used for diagnosis of several diseases. This review paper describes the application of image processing techniques for diagnosis of Thyroid disorders. Thyroid disorders are most common among all the endocrine diseases in India. Recent advances in thyroid imaging have considerably improved the diagnosis, treatment, follow-up and prognosis of high prevalence thyroid disorders such as thyroid nodule, goiter, thyroiditis and thyroid cancer that affect the normal thyroid function. Thyroid diagnosis using image processing techniques involves image pre-processing, ROI definition, image segmentation, feature extraction, feature selection, classification and post-processing. In this paper, a broad review of various image processing techniques applied to medical images in order to enhance the thyroid disease diagnosis is presented.