Image segmentation is one of the most important tasks in medical image analysis and is often the first and the most critical step in many clinical applications. In brain MRI analysis, image segmentation is commonly used for measuring and visualizing the brain’s anatomical structures, for analyzing brain changes, for delineating pathological regions, and for surgical planning and image-guided interventions. In the last few decades, various segmentation techniques of different accuracy and degree of complexity have been developed and reported in the literature. In this paper we review the most popular methods commonly used for brain MRI segmentation. We highlight differences between them and discuss their capabilities, advantages, and limitations. To address the complexity and challenges of the brain MRI segmentation problem, we first introduce the basic concepts of image segmentation. Then, we explain different MRI preprocessing steps including image registration, bias field correction, and removal of nonbrain tissue. Finally, after reviewing different brain MRI segmentation methods, we discuss the validation problem in brain MRI segmentation.

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MRI Segmentation of the Human Brain: Challenges, Methods, and Applications

Fuzzy c-means (FCM) has been considered as an effective algorithm for image segmentation. However, it still suffers from two problems: one is insufficient robustness to image noise, and the other is the Euclidean distance in FCM, which is sensitive to outliers. In this paper, we propose two new algorithms, generalized FCM (GFCM) and hierarchical FCM (HFCM), to solve these two problems. Traditional FCM can be considered as a linear combination of membership and distance from the expression of its mathematical formula. GFCM is generated by applying generalized mean on these two items. We impose generalized mean on membership to incorporate local spatial information and cluster information, and on distance function to incorporate local spatial information and image intensity value. Thus, our GFCM is more robust to image noise with the spatial constraints: the generalized mean. To solve the second problem caused by Euclidean distance (l2 norm), we introduce a more flexibility function which considers the distance function itself as a sub-FCM. Furthermore, the sub-FCM distance function in HFCM is general and flexible enough to deal with non-Euclidean data. Finally, we combine these two algorithms to introduce a new generalized hierarchical FCM (GHFCM). Experimental results demonstrate the improved robustness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Image segmentation by generalized hierarchical fuzzy C-means algorithm

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Integrating spatial fuzzy clustering with level set methods for automated medical image segmentation

Medical images have made a great impact on medicine, diagnosis, and treatment. The most important part of image processing is image segmentation. Many image segmentation methods for medical image analysis have been presented in this paper. In this paper, we have described the latest segmentation methods applied in medical image analysis. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are described besides examination of each algorithm with its application in Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Computed Tomography image analysis. Each algorithm is explained separately with its ability and features for the analysis of grey-level images. In order to evaluate the segmentation results, some popular benchmark measurements are presented in the final section.

Medical Image Segmentation Methods, Algorithms, and Applications

In this paper, a generalized multiple-kernel fuzzy C-means (FCM) (MKFCM) methodology is introduced as a framework for image-segmentation problems. In the framework, aside from the fact that the composite kernels are used in the kernel FCM (KFCM), a linear combination of multiple kernels is proposed and the updating rules for the linear coefficients of the composite kernel are derived as well. The proposed MKFCM algorithm provides us a new flexible vehicle to fuse different pixel information in image-segmentation problems. That is, different pixel information represented by different kernels is combined in the kernel space to produce a new kernel. It is shown that two successful enhanced KFCM-based image-segmentation algorithms are special cases of MKFCM. Several new segmentation algorithms are also derived from the proposed MKFCM framework. Simulations on the segmentation of synthetic and medical images demonstrate the flexibility and advantages of MKFCM-based approaches.

Hong Long Tzeng

Papers

Fuzzy c-means clustering with spatial information for image segmentation.