A study on fuzzy clustering for magnetic resonance brain image segmentation using soft computing approaches

This paper presents a novel idea of intracranial segmentation of magnetic resonance (MR) brain image using pixel intensity values by optimum boundary point detection (OBPD) method. The newly proposed (OBPD) method consists of three steps. Firstly, the brain only portion is extracted from the whole MR brain image. The brain only portion mainly contains three regions–gray matter (GM), white matter (WM) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). We need two boundary points to divide the brain pixels into three regions on the basis of their intensity. Secondly, the optimum boundary points are obtained using the newly proposed hybrid GA–BFO algorithm to compute final cluster centres of FCM method. For a comparison, other soft computing techniques GA, PSO and BFO are also used. Finally, FCM algorithm is executed only once to obtain the membership matrix. The brain image is then segmented using this final membership matrix. The key to our success is that we have proposed a technique where the final cluster centres for FCM are obtained using OBPD method. In addition, reformulated objective function for optimization is used. Initial values of boundary points are constrained to be in a range determined from the brain dataset. The boundary points violating imposed constraints are repaired. This method is validated by using simulated T1-weighted MR brain images from IBSR database with manual segmentation results. Further, we have used MR brain images from the Brainweb database with additional noise levels to validate the robustness of our proposed method. It is observed that our proposed method significantly improves segmentation results as compared to other methods.     

Novel segmentation algorithm in segmenting medical images

The aim of this paper is to develop an effective fuzzy c-means (FCM) technique for segmentation of Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) which is seriously affected by intensity inhomogeneities that are created by radio-frequency coils. The weighted bias field information is employed in this work to deal the intensity inhomogeneities during the segmentation of MRI. In order to segment the general shaped MRI dataset which is corrupted by intensity inhomogeneities and other artifacts, the effective objective function of fuzzy c-means is constructed by replacing the Euclidean distance with kernel-induced distance. In this paper, the initial cluster centers are assigned using the proposed center initialization algorithm for executing the effective FCM iteratively. To assess the performance of proposed method in comparison with other existed methods, experiments are performed on synthetic image, real breast and brain MRIs. The clustering results are validated using Silhouette accuracy index. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method is a promising technique for effective segmentation of medical images.     

用于脑部核磁共振图像分割的具有抗噪能力的BCFCM算法

脑部核磁共振成像(MRI)是脑疾病临床诊断的重要手段,而脑组织的准确分割则是其中一个重要的环节。然而MRI图像中普遍存在的噪声和偏移场给脑组织的准确分割造成了很大的困难。在MRI图像分割算法中,偏移场矫正模糊C-均值算法(BCFCM)在模糊C-均值聚类算法(FCM)的基础上增加了对偏移场的估计和空间信息的使用,可以很好地消除图像偏移场对分割造成的影响。但是BCFCM算法由于没有考虑到噪声对偏移场估计的影响,因此对高噪声图像的分割效果欠佳。针对MRI脑组织分割,在图像预处理过程中提出一种快速的分割方法来去除颅骨及其附属物。此外,提出基于BCFCM的改进算法,该改进算法在迭代过程中可以通过对噪声强度的估计来自适应地改变目标函数窗口的大小。同时,该算法引入高斯核函数对偏移场进行平滑处理,并通过阈值限制偏移场的估计值,以有效地避免偏移场的错误估计对分割结果的影响。实验结果表明,改进后的算法不仅可以有效准确地 分割脑组织,而且具有较强的抗噪声和处理偏移场的能力。     

基于MICO+FCM的MRI脑组织分割

针对MRI中存在的强度不均匀问题以及颅骨组织对于脑部组织提取所造成的影响,为了解决对特定脑部组织的研究问题,提出一个MICO+FCM脑组织分割算法。算法首先利用基于MICO的能量最小化算法对脑部MRI进行强度不均匀性估计和矫正,并且通过该算法完成对图像的初步分割,然后通过区域生长算法对图像中的颅骨组织进行去除,再利用FCM算法完成脑部组织中脑白质和脑灰的分割提取。通过仿真表明,相对于传统FCM算法及其它图像分割算法,提出的MICO+FCM脑组织分割算法在分割准确率和分割效率上均有所提升。     

Improved spatial fuzzy c-means clustering for image segmentation using PSO initialization,Mahalanobis distance and post-segmentation correction

In this paper, we propose an improvement method for image segmentation using the fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm (FCM). This algorithm is widely experimented in the field of image segmentation with very successful results. In this work, we suggest further improving these results by acting at three different levels. The first is related to the fuzzy c-means algorithm itself by improving the initialization step using a metaheuristic optimization. The second level is concerned with the integration of the spatial gray-level information of the image in the clustering segmentation process and the use of Mahalanobis distance to reduce the influence of the geometrical shape of the different classes. The final level corresponds to refining the segmentation results by correcting the errors of clustering by reallocating the potentially misclassified pixels. The proposed method, named improved spatial fuzzy c-means IFCMS, was evaluated on several test images including both synthetic images and simulated brain MRI images from the McConnell Brain Imaging Center (BrainWeb) database. This method is compared to the most used FCM-based algorithms of the literature. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the ideas presented.     

基于人工蜂群与模糊C均值的自适应小波变换的噪声图像分割

针对传统模糊C均值（FCM）聚类算法在处理噪声图像时易受到噪声影响的问题,提出了基于FCM的小波域特征增强的噪声图像分割方法。首先,将噪声图像进行二维小波分解;其次,对近似系数进行边缘增强,同时利用人工蜂群（ABC）优化算法对细节系数进行阈值处理,并将处理后的系数进行小波重构;最后,对重构后的图片使用FCM算法来进行图像分割。选取5幅典型的灰度图像,分别添加高斯噪声和椒盐噪声,使用多种方法进行分割,以分割后图像的峰值信噪比（PSNR）和误分率（ME）作为性能指标,实验结果表明,所提方法分割后的图片相较于传统FCM聚类算法分割方法和粒子群优化（PSO）分割方法分割后的图片在PSNR上最多分别有281%和54%的提升,在ME上最多分别有55%和41%的降低。可见所提出的分割方法较好地保留了图像边缘纹理信息,其抗噪性能与分割性能得到了提升。     

基于全变分模型的自适应FCM图像分割

针对模糊C均值(FCM)算法对噪声敏感的缺点,在FCM目标函数中引入全变分惩罚函数,提出一种基于全变分模型的FCM图像分割方法。该方法根据图像的纹理变化,自适应调整图像保真项的惩罚因子,同时在考虑分割代价的情况下,使迭代循环过程中的图像噪声得到平滑。实验结果表明,该方法能提高图像的分割效果,有效解决噪声抑制与精确分割之间的矛盾。     

Fuzzy C-mean based brain MRI segmentation algorithms

Brain image segmentation is one of the most important parts of clinical diagnostic tools. Fuzzy C-mean (FCM) is one of the most popular clustering based segmentation methods. In this paper, a review of the FCM based segmentation algorithms for brain MRI images is presented. The review covers algorithms for FCM based segmentation algorithms, their comparative evaluations based on reported results and the result of experiments for neighborhood based extensions for FCM.     

Effective fuzzy clustering techniques for segmentation of breast MRI

The goal of this work is to segment the breast into different regions, each corresponding to a different tissue, and to identify tissue regions judged abnormal, based on the signal enhancement-time information. There are a number of problems that render this task complex. Breast MRI segmentation based on the differential enhancement of image intensities can assist the clinician to detect suspicious regions. In this paper, we propose an effective segmentation method for breast contrast-enhanced MRI (ce-MRI). The segmentation method is developed based on standard fuzzy clustering techniques proposed by Bezedek. By minimizing the proposed effective objective function, this paper obtains an effective way of predicting membership grades for objects and new method to update centers. Experiments will be done with a synthetic image to show how effectively the new proposed effective fuzzy c-means (FCM) works in obtaining clusters. To show the performance of proposed FCM, this work compares the results with results of standard FCM algorithm on same synthetic image. Then the proposed method was applied to segment the clinical ce-MR images with the help of computer programing language and results have been shown visually.     

基于形态学多尺度修正的模糊C均值脑肿瘤分割方法

针对脑部核磁共振成像(MRI)图像因噪声、灰度不均匀、组织结构复杂及边界模糊不连续等造成肿瘤难以准确分割的问题,提出一种基于形态学多尺度修正的模糊C均值(FCM)聚类分割方法。首先根据邻域统计信息引入控制参数用于区分邻域中的噪声点、边缘点和区域内部点,结合空间位置信息建立像素与结构元素大小之间的函数关系;然后利用不同大小的结构元素对图像中不同类型像素进行形态学闭运算,消除对应于局部极小值的噪声干扰和非规则细节,而目标部分的区域轮廓位置基本保持不变;最后在修正基础上进行FCM聚类分割,避免FCM陷入局部极优和误分类,同时保持区域轮廓准确定位。与标准FCM、核FCM(KFCM)、遗传FCM(GFCM)、模糊局部信息C均值(FLICM)等改进方法以及专家手工勾画结果进行了对比,实验结果表明,该方法的过分割率和欠分割率较低,且与标准分割的相似度指数和JS值均较高,具有较好的分割效果。     

基于K-means和图割的脑部MRI分割算法

为了克服原始图割算法在用户选定的像素种子点较少情况下,目标边界容易出现错分这一现象,本文提出了基于K-means和图割(Graph cut,GC)算法相结合的交互式K-均值图割（K-means and graph cut,KMGC）算法,对脑部核磁共振图像（Magnetic resonance image,MRI） 进行交互式操作,该算法通过K-means聚类,对脑部MRI的灰度不均匀性进行了处理,在此基础上,再使用图割算法进一步对脑部MRI进行细化,从而达到有效地分割脑白质和脑 灰质的目的。本文分别在仿真和真实的脑部MRI数据上进行了大量的实验,分别从定量分析和定性分析两个角度对实验结果进行了分析,并与其他分割算法进行了对比,对比实验结果标明,KMGC算法能够有效地对脑部MRI进行分割,并在分割效果上优于其他算法。     

Strong fuzzy c-means in medical image data analysis

This paper presents a robust fuzzy c-means (FCM) for an automatic effective segmentation of breast and brain magnetic resonance images (MRI). This paper obtains novel objective functions for proposed robust fuzzy c-means by replacing original Euclidean distance with properties of kernel function on feature space and using Tsallis entropy. By minimizing the proposed effective objective functions, this paper gets membership partition matrices and equations for successive prototypes. In order to reduce the computational complexity and running time, center initialization algorithm is introduced for initializing the initial cluster center. The initial experimental works have done on synthetic image and benchmark dataset to investigate the effectiveness of proposed, and then the proposed method has been implemented to differentiate the different region of real breast and brain magnetic resonance images. In order to identify the validity of proposed fuzzy c-means methods, segmentation accuracy is computed by using silhouette method. The experimental results show that the proposed method is more capable in segmentation of medical images than existed methods.     

混合分水岭变换和改进FCM的图像分割方法

分水岭变换是图像分割的一种强有力的形态工具,能够自动生成一系列封闭分割区域。其不足之处是过分割、对噪声敏感。为克服分水岭变换固有的缺点,综合利用非线性滤波和改进的FCM算法优化分水岭变换得出的初始分割,提出了一种新的混合分割算法-HWIF（Hybrid Watershed and Improved FCM）分割法。与MeanShift算法及区域合并算法相比,该方法充分利用了区域的灰度和区域间的空间信息。实验结果表明该算法能有效克服分水岭算法的过分割问题,且分割效果优于以上两种方法。     

A new segmentation system for brain MR images based on fuzzy techniques

This work concerns a new method called fuzzy membership C-means (FMCMs) for segmentation of magnetic resonance images (MRI), and an efficient program implementation of it to the segmentation of MRI. Classical unsupervised clustering methods including the FCM by Bezdek, suffer many problems that can be partially treated with a proper rule to construct the initial membership matrix to clusters. This work develops a specific method to construct the initial membership matrix to clusters in order to improve the strength of the clusters. The new FMCM is tested on a set of benchmarks and then the application to the segmentation of MR images is presented and compared with the results obtained using FCM.     

MRI脑肿瘤图像分割的深度学习方法综述

磁共振成像（MRI）作为一种典型的非侵入式成像技术，可产生高质量的无损伤和无颅骨伪影的脑影像，为脑肿瘤的诊断和治疗提供更为全面的信息，是脑肿瘤诊疗的主要技术手段。MRI脑肿瘤自动分割利用计算机技术从多模态脑影像中自动将肿瘤区（坏死区、水肿区、非增强肿瘤区和增强肿瘤区）和正常组织区进行分割和标注，对于辅助脑肿瘤的诊疗具有重要作用。本文对MRI脑肿瘤图像分割的深度学习方法进行了总结与分析，给出了各类方法的基本思想、网络架构形式、代表性改进方案以及优缺点总结等，并给出了部分典型方法在BraTS（multimodal brain tumor segmentation）数据集上的性能表现与分析结果。通过对该领域研究方法进行综述，对现有基于深度学习的MRI脑肿瘤分割研究方法进行了梳理，作为新的发展方向，MRI脑肿瘤图像分割的深度学习方法较传统方法已取得明显的性能提升，已成为领域主流方法并持续展现出良好的发展前景，有助于进一步推动MRI脑肿瘤分割在临床诊疗上的应用。     

A non-local fuzzy segmentation method: Application to brain MRI

The Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm is a widely used and flexible approach to automated image segmentation, especially in the field of brain tissue segmentation from 3D MRI, where it addresses the problem of partial volume effects. In order to improve its robustness to classical image deterioration, namely noise and bias field artifacts, which arise in the MRI acquisition process, we propose to integrate into the FCM segmentation methodology concepts inspired by the non-local (NL) framework, initially defined and considered in the context of image restoration. The key algorithmic contributions of this article are the definition of an NL data term and an NL regularisation term to efficiently handle intensity inhomogeneities and noise in the data. The resulting new energy formulation is then built into an NL-FCM brain tissue segmentation algorithm. Experiments performed on both synthetic and real MRI data, leading to the classification of brain tissues into grey matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid, indicate a significant improvement in performance in the case of higher noise levels, when compared to a range of standard algorithms.     

基于粗糙集相容关系的图像聚类分割

通过基于粗糙集相容关系的划分,介绍了一种新的图像聚类分割方法,首先,以不同聚类数情况下FCM的分割结果为依据构建信息表,在合并重复行后,图像被分成多个对象区域,然后,通过值约简获得各属性权值并以此为依据,计算各对象之间的差异度,进而通过差异度定义 相容关系,最后由 相容关系对对象论域进行划分,完成图像分割。该方法在人工生成图像和大脑MRI图像的分割中得到验证,实验结果表明,本文方法比FCM方法具有更好的分割准确性,对模糊边界区域的分割效果较好。     

基于隶属度光滑约束的模糊C均值聚类算法

传统的FCM聚类算法未利用图像的空间信息,在分割叠加了噪声的MR图像时分割效果不理想。本文考虑到脑部MR图像真实的灰度值具有分片为常数的特性,按照合理利用图像空间信息的原则,对传统的FCM聚类算法进行了改进,增加了使隶属度趋向于分片光滑的约束项,得到了新的聚类算法。通过对模拟脑部MR图像和临床脑部MR图像的分割实验结果表明,本文提出的新算法比传统的FCM算法等多种图像分割算法有更精确的图像分割能力,并且运算简单、运算速度快、稳健性好。     

MRI脑肿瘤图像分割研究进展及挑战

脑肿瘤分割是医学图像处理中的一项重要内容,其目的是辅助医生做出准确的诊断和治疗,在临床脑部医学领域具有重要的实用价值。核磁共振成像（MRI）是临床医生研究脑部组织结构的主要影像学工具,为了使更多研究者对MRI脑肿瘤图像分割理论及其发展进行探索,本文对该领域研究现状进行综述。首先总结了用于MRI脑肿瘤图像分割的方法,并对现有方法进行了分类,即分为监督分割和非监督分割;然后重点综述了基于深度学习的脑肿瘤分割方法,在研究其关键技术基础上归纳了优化策略;最后介绍了脑肿瘤分割（BraTS）挑战,并结合挑战中所用方法展望了脑肿瘤分割领域未来的发展趋势。MRI脑肿瘤图像分割领域的研究已经取得了一些显著进展,尤其是深度学习的发展为该领域的研究提供了新的思路。但由于脑肿瘤在大小、形状和位置方面的高度变化,以及脑肿瘤图像数据有限且类别不平衡等问题,使得脑肿瘤图像分割仍是一个极具挑战的课题。由于分割过程缺乏可解释性和透明性,如何将全自动分割方法应用于临床试验,还需要进行深入研究。     

三维卷积网络在脑海马体分割中的应用

为了提高海马体分割的精确性和鲁棒性,提出一种新型的三维卷积网络Dilated-3DUnet。该网络中卷积层的通道数采用"金字塔"分布的方式,有效缩小了参数的规模。此外,使用三维空洞卷积作为级联卷积操作,不仅有效地结合了脑磁共振成像(MRI)的深层特征和浅层特征,而且在不改变参数个数的情况下,扩大了卷积层的感受野,获取了多尺度信息,能够更好地捕捉MRI图像的浅层特征,从而提高了分割精度。在ADNI数据集上进行实验,以相似性系数、灵敏度、阳性预测率为评价指标,准确率分别达到了89.32%、88.72%和90.05%。实验表明,Dilated-3DUnet充分利用了脑MRI图像的三维空间信息,具有更强的泛化能力和更好的特征表达能力,从而大大提升了分割精度。