Subclass Discriminant Analysis of morphological and textural features for HEp-2 staining pattern classification

•We propose a HEp-2 classification strategy based on Subclass Discriminant Analysis.•Our approach copes well with the high within-class variance of HEp-2 patterns.•We investigate the individual and combined contribution of different image attributes.•We integrate morphological, global and local textural information.•Our approach provides staining pattern classification accuracy of about 90%.

Classifying HEp-2 fluorescence patterns in Indirect Immunofluorescence (IIF) HEp-2 cell imaging is important for the differential diagnosis of autoimmune diseases. The current technique, based on human visual inspection, is time-consuming, subjective and dependent on the operator's experience. Automating this process may be a solution to these limitations, making IIF faster and more reliable. This work proposes a classification approach based on Subclass Discriminant Analysis (SDA), a dimensionality reduction technique that provides an effective representation of the cells in the feature space, suitably coping with the high within-class variance typical of HEp-2 cell patterns. In order to generate an adequate characterization of the fluorescence patterns, we investigate the individual and combined contributions of several image attributes, showing that the integration of morphological, global and local textural features is the most suited for this purpose. The proposed approach provides an accuracy of the staining pattern classification of about 90%.