The Bag of Words Approach for the Classification of Head and Neck Cancers Using Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy

Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS) is a leading technique for the detection of head and neck cancers. It can capture information regarding tissue absorption and scattering. In this research work, we propose a novel method for the identification of normal and Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) mucosa tissues using the Bag Of Words (BOW) approach. The study included 70 spectra from normal mucosa tissue sites and 70 spectra from SCC mucosa tissue sites. First, the spectra are preprocessed by extracting the useful wavelength range, denoising and reducing the inter and intra patient variability. Subsequently, features are extracted from each spectrum by continuously sliding a window with a predef…