A multiresolution image segmentation technique based on pyramidalsegmentation and fuzzy clustering

In this paper, an unsupervised image segmentation technique is presented, which combines pyramidal image segmentation with the fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm. Each layer of the pyramid is split into a number of regions by a root labeling technique, and then fuzzy c-means is used to merge the regions of the layer with the highest image resolution. A cluster validity functional is used to find the optimal number of objects automatically. Segmentation of a number of synthetic as well as clinical images is illustrated and two fully automatic segmentation approaches are evaluated, which determine the left ventricular volume (LV) in 140 cardiovascular magnetic resonance (MR) images. First fuzzy c-means is applied without pyramids. In the second approach the regions generated by pyramidal segmentation are merged by fuzzy c-means. The correlation coefficients of manually and automatically defined LV lumen of all 140 and 20 end-diastolic images were equal to 0.86 and 0.79, respectively, when images were segmented with fuzzy c-means alone. These coefficients increased to 0.90 and 0.93 when the pyramidal segmentation was combined with fuzzy c-means. This method can be applied to any dimensional representation and at any resolution level of an image series. The evaluation study shows good performance in detecting LV lumen in MR images.     

Fuzzy local Gaussian mixture model for brain MR image segmentation

Accurate brain tissue segmentation from magnetic resonance (MR) images is an essential step in quantitative brain image analysis. However, due to the existence of noise and intensity inhomogeneity in brain MR images, many segmentation algorithms suffer from limited accuracy. In this paper, we assume that the local image data within each voxel's neighborhood satisfy the Gaussian mixture model (GMM), and thus propose the fuzzy local GMM (FLGMM) algorithm for automated brain MR image segmentation. This algorithm estimates the segmentation result that maximizes the posterior probability by minimizing an objective energy function, in which a truncated Gaussian kernel function is used to impose the spatial constraint and fuzzy memberships are employed to balance the contribution of each GMM. We compared our algorithm to state-of-the-art segmentation approaches in both synthetic and clinical data. Our results show that the proposed algorithm can largely overcome the difficulties raised by noise, low contrast, and bias field, and substantially improve the accuracy of brain MR image segmentation.     

A Scalable Framework For Segmenting Magnetic Resonance Images

A fast, accurate and fully automatic method of segmenting magnetic resonance images of the human brain is introduced. The approach scales well allowing fast segmentations of fine resolution images. The approach is based on modifications of the soft clustering algorithm, fuzzy c-means, that enable it to scale to large data sets. Two types of modifications to create incremental versions of fuzzy c-means are discussed. They are much faster when compared to fuzzy c-means for medium to extremely large data sets because they work on successive subsets of the data. They are comparable in quality to application of fuzzy c-means to all of the data. The clustering algorithms coupled with inhomogeneity correction and smoothing are used to create a framework for automatically segmenting magnetic resonance images of the human brain. The framework is applied to a set of normal human brain volumes acquired from different magnetic resonance scanners using different head coils, acquisition parameters and field strengths. Results are compared to those from two widely used magnetic resonance image segmentation programs, Statistical Parametric Mapping and the FMRIB Software Library (FSL). The results are comparable to FSL while providing significant speed-up and better scalability to larger volumes of data.     

An adaptive spatial fuzzy clustering algorithm for 3-D MR image segmentation

An adaptive spatial fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm is presented in this paper for the segmentation of three-dimensional (3-D) magnetic resonance (MR) images. The input images may be corrupted by noise and intensity nonuniformity (INU) artifact. The proposed algorithm takes into account the spatial continuity constraints by using a dissimilarity index that allows spatial interactions between image voxels. The local spatial continuity constraint reduces the noise effect and the classification ambiguity. The INU artifact is formulated as a multiplicative bias field affecting the true MR imaging signal. By modeling the log bias field as a stack of smoothing B-spline surfaces, with continuity enforced across slices, the computation of the 3-D bias field reduces to that of finding the B-spline coefficients, which can be obtained using a computationally efficient two-stage algorithm. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by extensive segmentation experiments using both simulated and real MR images and by comparison with other published algorithms.     

A novel fuzzy clustering algorithm with non local adaptive spatial constraint for image segmentation

Generalized fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm with improved fuzzy partitions (GIFP_FCM) is a novel fuzzy clustering algorithm. However when GIFP_FCM is applied to image segmentation, it is sensitive to noise in the image because of ignoring the spatial information contained in the pixels. In order to solve this problem, a novel fuzzy clustering algorithm with non local adaptive spatial constraint (FCA_NLASC) is proposed in this paper. In the proposed method, a novel non local adaptive spatial constraint term is introduced to modify the objective function of GIFP_FCM. The characteristic of this technique is that the adaptive spatial parameter for each pixel is designed to make the non local spatial information of each pixel playing a different role in guiding the noisy image segmentation. Segmentation experiments on synthetic and real images, especially magnetic resonance (MR) images, are performed to assess the performance of an FCA_NLASC in comparison with GIFP_FCM and fuzzy c-means clustering algorithms with local spatial constraint. Experimental results show that the proposed method is robust to noise in the image and more effective than the comparative algorithms.     

Markov random field segmentation of brain MR images

Describes a fully-automatic three-dimensional (3-D)-segmentation technique for brain magnetic resonance (MR) images. By means of Markov random fields (MRF's) the segmentation algorithm captures three features that are of special importance for MR images, i.e., nonparametric distributions of tissue intensities, neighborhood correlations, and signal inhomogeneities. Detailed simulations and real MR images demonstrate the performance of the segmentation algorithm. In particular, the impact of noise, inhomogeneity, smoothing, and structure thickness are analyzed quantitatively. Even single-echo MR images are well classified into gray matter, white matter, cerebrospinal fluid, scalp-bone, and background. A simulated annealing and an iterated conditional modes implementation are presented     

A modified fuzzy C-means algorithm for bias field estimation and segmentation of MRI data

In this paper, we present a novel algorithm for fuzzy segmentation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and estimation of intensity inhomogeneities using fuzzy logic. MRI intensity inhomogeneities can be attributed to imperfections in the radio-frequency coils or to problems associated with the acquisition sequences. The result is a slowly varying shading artifact over the image that can produce errors with conventional intensity-based classification. Our algorithm is formulated by modifying the objective function of the standard fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm to compensate for such inhomogeneities and to allow the labeling of a pixel (voxel) to be influenced by the labels in its immediate neighborhood. The neighborhood effect acts as a regularizer and biases the solution toward piecewise-homogeneous labelings. Such a regularization is useful in segmenting scans corrupted by salt and pepper noise. Experimental results on both synthetic images and MR data are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.     

融入局部信息的直觉模糊核聚类图像分割算法

针对传统直觉模糊C均值聚类(Intuitionistic Fuzzy C-means,IFCM)的图像分割算法对噪声和初始聚类中心敏感,导致聚类精度不高和迭代次数多的问题,提出一种结合局部信息的直觉模糊核聚类的图像分割算法。在该算法中,首先采用基于直方图的方法确定聚类中心初始值,解决算法对聚类中心的初始值敏感的问题;其次,利用核函数将待分类数据集映射到高维非线性空间,改善分类数据的线性可分性,同时在目标函数中引入局部灰度信息和局部空间信息,优化直觉模糊隶属度的计算方法,提高直觉模糊聚类的分类精度。实验结果表明,提出算法能减少迭代次数,提高聚类精度,能有效对图像进行分割;无论在对图像分割还是在聚类有效性上,提出算法都要优于传统的模糊聚类算法,如模糊C均值聚类(Fuzzy C-means,FCM)、模糊核均值聚类(Kernel-based fuzzy c-means,KFCM)）、引入空间信息的直觉模糊C均值聚类(Intuitionistic Fuzzy C-means with spatial constraints ,IFCM-S)、模糊空间聚类(Fuzzy Local Information C-means,FLICM）、直觉模糊C均值聚类(Intuitionistic Kernel-based Fuzzy C-means,IFKCM）等。      

基于模糊熵聚类和改进粒子群的MRI脑图像分割研究

现有医学图像生成过程中无法回避噪声的引入,而目前还未有较好的算法对高噪声的MRI医学图像进行分割,分割归属于聚类问题,聚类常用的方法是模糊聚类,但模糊聚类需要解决对噪声和初始化敏感的问题,提出了一种基于模糊熵聚类和粒子群优化算法的MRI脑图像分割算法。首先在模糊熵聚类算法的基础上进行改进,设计了一种利用邻域空间信息的核化模糊熵聚类的新目标函数,然后提出一种基于改进粒子群优化的新算法,最后通过最优化目标函数对MRI图像的白质、灰质和脑脊液进行分割。选取蒙特利尔神经学研究所数据库中的MRI脑图像,将所提出的算法与现有的几种聚类分割算法进行比较,仿真实验结果表明,所提出算法能够解决模糊聚类对噪声和初始化敏感的问题,实现了对高噪声MRI图像的精确分割。     

Cluster analysis of dynamic cerebral contrast-enhanced perfusion MRI time-series

We performed neural network clustering on dynamic contrast-enhanced perfusion magnetic resonance imaging time-series in patients with and without stroke. Minimal-free-energy vector quantization, self-organizing maps, and fuzzy c-means clustering enabled self-organized data-driven segmentation with respect to fine-grained differences of signal amplitude and dynamics, thus identifying asymmetries and local abnormalities of brain perfusion. We conclude that clustering is a useful extension to conventional perfusion parameter maps.     

基于改进的模糊C均值聚类图像分割新算法

模糊C均值（FCM）聚类算法广泛用于图像的自动分割,但是传统的FCM算法没有考虑像素的空间信息,因而对噪声十分敏感。为了克服上述问题,提出了一种新的基于改进的FCM图像分割算法。该方法将空间的信息融入到标准的FCM算法中,通过引入表征邻域像素对中心像素作用的先验概率来重新确定当前像素的模糊隶属度值,该概率在算法执行过程中根据模糊隶属度值自动地予以确定。算法中使用基于统计直方图的快速FCM算法进行初始化,收敛速度大大提高。人造图像和实际图像的实验结果表明该方法的有效性和对噪声具有较强的鲁棒性。     

基于自适应相似度距离的改进FCM图像分割

为了改善传统FCM算法抗噪性差的问题,提出了基于自适应相似度距离的FCM算法.算法将像素分为两个特征:第一个描述的是像素的内在属性(灰度级特征),第二个描述邻域像素特征(空间特征).在此基础上,基于自适应相似度距离,根据像素在图像中的空间位置决定哪一个特征拥有优先级,对其进行聚类.图像分割结果表明,算法比标准FCM算法有明显改善,具有很好的抗噪性能,取得了更好的分割效果.     

Enhanced kernel-based fuzzy local information clustering integrating neighborhood membership

To enhance the segmentation performance and robustness of kernel weighted fuzzy local information C-means (KWFLICM) clustering for image segmentation in the presence of high noise, an improved KWFLICM algorithm aggregating neighborhood membership information is proposed. This algorithm firstly constructs a linear weighted membership function by combining the membership degrees of current pixel and its neighborhood pixels. Then it is normalized to meet the constraint that the sum of membership degree of pixel belonging to different classes is 1. In the end, normalized membership is used to update the clustering centers of KWFLICM algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed adaptive KWFLICM ( AKWFLICM) algorithm outperforms existing state of the art fuzzy clustering-related segmentation algorithms for image with high noise.     

EM algorithm for image segmentation initialized by a tree structurescheme

In this correspondence, the objective is to segment vector images, which are modeled as multivariate finite mixtures. The underlying images are characterized by Markov random fields (MRFs), and the applied segmentation procedure is based on the expectation-maximization (EM) technique. We propose an initialization procedure that does not require any prior information and yet provides excellent initial estimates for the EM method. The performance of the overall segmentation is demonstrated by segmentation of simulated one-dimensional (1D) and multidimensional magnetic resonance (MR) brain images.     

NMR image segmentation based on Unsupervised Extreme Learning Machine

Unsupervised Extreme Learning Machine (US-ELM) is a machine learning method widely used. With good performance in anti-noise and data representation, as well as fast clustering speed, US-ELM is suitable for processing noise containing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) image. Therefore, in this paper, a brain NMR image segmentation approach based on US-ELM is proposed. Firstly, a median filter is adopted to reduce the influence of noise; Secondly, US-ELM maps the original data into the embedded space, which makes it increasingly effective to represent the characteristic of pixel points, and then uses the k-means method to perform the image segmentation, named NS-UE; After that, spatial fuzzy C-means (spFCM) provides a better solution for handling NMR image with noise caused by the intensity inhomogeneity than k-means does. As a result, an image segmentation approach based on US-ELM and spFCM (NS-UF) is proposed, so as to improve the effect of clustering in embedded space. Finally, extensive experiments on real data demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed approaches with various experimental settings.     

Image Segmentation Based on Support Vector Machine

Image segmentation is a necessary step in image analysis. Support vector machine （SVM） approach is proposed to segment images and its segmentation performance is evaluated. Experimental results show that： the effects of kernel function and model parameters on the segmentation performance are significant; SVM approach is less sensitive to noise in image segmentation; The segmentation performance of SVM approach is better than that of back-propagation multi-layer perceptron （BP-MLP） approach and fuzzy c-means （FCM） approach.     

快速空间邻域信息的中智模糊聚类分割算法

为了克服传统的模糊C-均值聚类算法抗噪性能差的局限性,在中智模糊聚类基础上提出了一种新的基于邻域信息的中智模糊聚类图像分割算法.将中智集合引入模糊C-均值聚类算法,转化为一个优化问题.通过建立局部邻域信息约束的函数考虑像素之间的相互联系进行图像分割.通过对灰度图像添加不同的加性和乘性噪声进行分割测试,其测试结果表明,该算法得到的图像分割结果更稳定、边界更平滑且具有较强的噪声抑制能力.     

基于二维直方图的图象模糊聚类分割方法

本文提出了一个基于二维直方图的图象分割模糊聚类方法,它除了考虑象素点的灰度信息外还考虑了象素点与其邻域的空间相关信息,利用模糊C均值(FCM)聚类算法得到象素点的隶属度,并由各象素点的隶属度实现图象分割.实验结果表明,本文提出的方法与Otsu法和熵函数法相比,错分的象素点数大约减少了四分之三.     

Model-based 3-D segmentation of multiple sclerosis lesions in magnetic resonance brain images

Human investigators instinctively segment medical images into their anatomical components, drawing upon prior knowledge of anatomy to overcome image artifacts, noise, and lack of tissue contrast. The authors describe: 1) the development and use of a brain tissue probability model for the segmentation of multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions in magnetic resonance (MR) brain images, and 2) an empirical comparison of the performance of statistical and decision tree classifiers, applied to MS lesion segmentation. Based on MR image data obtained from healthy volunteers, the model provides prior probabilities of brain tissue distribution per unit voxel in a standardized 3-D "brain space". In comparison to purely data-driven segmentation, the use of the model to guide the segmentation of MS lesions reduced the volume of false positive lesions by 50-80%     

Segmentation of magnetic resonance images using fuzzy algorithms for learning vector quantization

This paper evaluates a segmentation technique for magnetic resonance (MR) images of the brain based on fuzzy algorithms for learning vector quantization (FALVQ). These algorithms perform vector quantization by updating all prototypes of a competitive network through an unsupervised learning process. Segmentation of MR images is formulated as an unsupervised vector quantization process, where the local values of different relaxation parameters form the feature vectors which are represented by a relatively small set of prototypes. The experiments evaluate a variety of FALVQ algorithms in terms of their ability to identify different tissues and discriminate between normal tissues and abnormalities.