Conditional spatial fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm for segmentation of MRI images

• A conditional spatial fuzzy C-means (csFCM) clustering algorithm to improve the robustness of the conventional FCM algorithm is presented.
• The method incorporates conditional affects and spatial information into the membership functions.
• The algorithm resolves the problem of sensitivity to noise and intensity inhomogeneity in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data.
• The experimental results on four volumes of simulated and one volume of real-patient MRI brain images, each one having 51 images, support efficiency of the csFCM algorithm.
• The csFCM algorithm has superior performance in terms of qualitative and quantitative studies on the image segmentation results than the k-means, FCM and some other recently proposed FCM-based algorithms.

The fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm has got significant importance due to its unsupervised form of learning and more tolerant to variations and noise as compared to other methods in medical image segmentation. In this paper, we propose a conditional spatial fuzzy C-means (csFCM) clustering algorithm to improve the robustness of the conventional FCM algorithm. This is achieved through the incorporation of conditioning effects imposed by an auxiliary (conditional) variable corresponding to each pixel, which describes a level of involvement of the pixel in the constructed clusters, and spatial information into the membership functions. The problem of sensitivity to noise and intensity inhomogeneity in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data is effectively reduced by incorporating local and global spatial information into a weighted membership function. The experimental results on four volumes of simulated and one volume of real-patient MRI brain images, each one having 51 images, show that the csFCM algorithm has superior performance in terms of qualitative and quantitative studies such as, cluster validity functions, segmentation accuracy, tissue segmentation accuracy and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve on the image segmentation results than the k-means, FCM and some other recently proposed FCM-based algorithms.

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