MRI brain tumor segmentation based on improved fuzzy c-means

method
Wankai Deng , Wei Xiao, Chao Pan, Jianguo Liu
Key Laboratory of Education Ministry for Image Processing and Intelligence Control
Institute for Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence,
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the image segmentation, which is one of the key problems in medical image processing. A new
medical image segmentation method is proposed based on fuzzy c- means algorithm and spatial information. Firstly, we
classify the image into the region of interest and background using fuzzy c means algorithm. Then we use the
information of the tissues’ gradient and the intensity inhomogeneities of regions to improve the quality of segmentation.
The sum of the mean variance in the region and the reciprocal of the mean gradient along the edge of the region are
chosen as an objective function. The minimum of the sum is optimum result. The result shows that the clustering
segmentation algorithm is effective.
Keywords: MRI, brain tumor, FCM, gradient, inhomogeneity

1. INTRODUCTION
There are three pure brain tissue classes in brain MR images, gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid,1 Brain
tumor segmentation is a process to separate the different tumor tissues from those normal ones. MRI, as a powerful and
mature technology, can provide various information about brain tissue, and is becoming extremely important in clinical
diagnosis.2 However, due to many reasons such as limited resolution, noise, intensity inhomogeneities, partial volume
effects and so on, it’s difficulty to get sound effects in segmentation from Magnetic Resonance images. Especially, under
the influence of partial volume effects, many voxels may be composed of multiple tissue types.3
As we know, numerous studies of brain segmentation have been proposed, many of which can be categorized into two
classes, region detection methods and boundary detection methods, and their goals are to obtain the region and boundary
of the desired objects. Meanwhile, most existing segmentation methods are usually dedicated only for specific objects.
Combined with the existing methods and aimed to get better results, it’s useful to take soft segmentation methods into
account. In soft segmentation, voxels are classified into different classes with various degrees of uncertainty which are
given by functions. The larger the value of function for a specific voxel, the larger the possibility that this voxel belongs
to that cluster. The fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm is soft segmentation method, and it has aroused
comprehensive attention. There have been many different families of fuzzy clustering algorithms proposed.1
In Ostu’s method ,it assumes that the image to be thresholded contains two classes of pixels foreground and background
then calculates the optimum threshold separating those two classes so that their intra-class variance is minimal.4 As we
know, gradient variance is a kind of measurement for the distributed uniformity .Each divided class contains not only
interior area but also edge area. In interior area gradient values are smaller; while, in edge area the gradient values are
larger. When the between-cluster variance of two classes is the maximum, the best result of the segmentation will be
obtained. Under this enlightening method, a constrained term in FCM will be proposed just modified from Ostu method.
In this paper, we will try to develop a new and effective algorithm for segmentation of MRI based on FCM. Firstly we
will modify the objective function of FCM, and then an addition term will be used to constrain the behavior of
membership functions. These constrained terms are to take advantage of useful data while overcoming potential
difficulties3.The sum of the mean variance in the region and the reciprocal of the mean gradient along the edge of the
region are chosen as an objective function. The minimum of the sum is optimum result.5We use the real MRI data to
verify the algorithm and experimental results are good consistent.

MIPPR 2009: Medical Imaging, Parallel Processing of Images, and Optimization Techniques,
edited by Jianguo Liu, Kunio Doi, Aaron Fenster, S. C. Chan, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7497, 74972N
© 2009 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/09/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.832577

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7497 74972N-1

We organize the paper as fellows. Firstly, we introduce the methodology including FCM and the improved FCM in
Section 2. We then give the experimental results in Section 3. Finally we come to the conclusion in Section 4.

2. METHODOLOGY
2.1 Fuzzy C-means algorithm
The theory of fuzzy logic was developed by Zadeh in late 1960s.The Fuzzy clustering belongs to unsupervised
classification methods and is widely used in segmentation of medical images. The most well known fuzzy clustering
method is the fuzzy c-means algorithm and its different extensions1. The Fuzzy c-mean clustering algorithm is based on
the minimization of an objective function called c-means function.
c N

J (X;U, V )= ∑ ∑ ( μ ik ) || xk − vi || A
m 2
(1)
i =1 k =1

DikA =|| xk − vi || A = ( xk − vi ) A( xk − vi )
2 2 T
(2)

The cluster algorithm gives a set of data X = [ x1 , x2 ,..., xn ], xi ∈ R , where n is represents the number of
n

features, V = [v1 , v2 , ..., vc ] are geometric cluster prototypes. The algorithm uses weightings μik to determine the
prototypes vi for C clusters. The number of different classes C must be given and DikA is the cluster centers of each
region. The stationary points of objective function (1) can be also found by means of language multipliers:
c N N c

J (X;U, V , λ ) = ∑ ∑ ( μ ik ) DikA + ∑ λk ( ∑ μ ik − 1)
m 2
(3)
i =1 k =1 k =1 i =1

Minimization of J is based on the suitable selection of U and V through the following equation:

1
μik = c
,1 ≤ i ≤ c,1 ≤ k ≤ n, (4)
∑ (D ikA
/ DjkA )
2/( m −1)

j =1

∑μ m
ik
xk
vi = k =1
n
,1 ≤ i ≤ c (5)
∑μ m
ik
k =1

It always sets DikA >0, ∀i , k and m > 1 .

2

The algorithm can be summarized in the following steps:

Step1 Given the number the number of clusters C , the weighting exponent m , the norm-inducing matrix A , then the
termination tolerance ε .
(0)
Step2 Initialize the partition matrix U

Step3 Use U and formula vi to compute the cluster prototypes:

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7497 74972N-2

 N

∑μ ik
( l −1)
xk
= ,1 ≤ i ≤ c
(l ) k =1
vi N

∑ (μ ( l −1)
i ,k
)
m

k =1

Step 4compute the distances:

DikA = ( xk − vi ) A( xk − vi ),1 ≤ i ≤ c;1 ≤ k ≤ N
2 T

Step 5 Update the distances:

1
μi , k =
(l )
c

∑ (D ikA
/ D jkA )
2/ ( m −1)

j =1

||< ε .
( l −1) 6-9
−U
(l )
Until | U

2.2 Improvement with spatial information

As we know, the segmentation method based on FCM only depends on the gray of images, and it doesn’t take the spatial
information of each voxel into account. So it is necessary to provide a more holistic segmentation model.
In the FCM algorithm, once the variable c is given, the image can be divided into several parts. On this basis, we get to
further segmentation using the spatial information. We know that there are some features are similar in the same region,
while between different regions the features are distinct. In other words, in the same region, the features change
smoothly; however, in the boundary the changes are intensity relatively. So the segmentation of the boundary is more
better, the mean gradient of the boundary is more bigger .At the same time ,The more the region we segmented contains
the same tissues, the smaller the mean variance of the region will be. With these spatial features, we get the primary
method. First, through the reconstruction of gradient, the gradient image can be obtained by using Sobel operator, and
then the area and variance of the interesting region are calculated. Our aim is to get a closed region on base of the
interesting region which gets from the FCM. This closed region must meet the goal that the mean variance adds the
reciprocal of the mean gradient to be minimum.
After proceed by the FCM method, the preliminary region of tumor tissues is obtained, and which is used as the initial
region. Then we acquire a set of the interesting regions through an iterative process on base of the initial region. First
time we set the value of the initial region to be one, and the background to be zero. Then we use a window to slide
through the picture, when the value in the window is the same as that of the initial region, the region that the window
covered is joined into the initial region.

Suppose that the iteration number is t , the set of the interesting regions is p j and its closed outline curve is l j . i
represents gray-level , 0 ≤ i < L , ni is the number of gray-level i in p j , n j is the number of pixels on the outline
l j . For each pixel k , we can get the gradient of it and designate the gradient by g k through the gradient image. So
mean gradient of each outline is
nj

∑g k

Gl = k =1
(6)
j
nj
1
βl j = (7)
Gl j

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At the same time, the mean variance of each region p j can be written as follows10:

L −1

∑ (in ) i

μp = i =0
L −1
(8)
∑n
j

i
i=0

L −1

∑ (i − μ pj
) 2 ni
σ p2 = i =0
L −1
(9)
∑n
j

i
i =0

Thus, a new objective function is defined using the reciprocal of mean gradient and variance as follows:

s j = β l + σ p2
j j
(10)

s = arg min{s j } (11)

j

From (11) we can get the tumor tissues which is the optimum result.

3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT
Our algorithm is programmed with Matlab language, all the data are from a clinic. During the operating process, we
choose the parameters as follows, the fuzzy weighted index m =2, which not only can improve the operating speed, but
also can get the optimal clustering effects. Convergence threshold ε = 10 . We use the random functions to initial the
−5

membership matrix.

( a1 ) ( b1 ) ( c1 )

( a2 ) (b )2
( c2 )

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 Fig.1. results on MR brain image ( ai ) Original image ( bi ) FCM algorithm ( ci ) the enhanced algorithm

(d) (e ) (f)
Fig.2. results on T1 MR brain image (d) Original image (e) FCM algorithm (f) the enhanced algorithm

The results are very encouraging and prove the effectiveness of the method to segment tumor tissues.
In comparison with some currently existing methods, this method has some advantages, making it efficient and easy to
implement the segmentation. It’s significant that this method can fully utilize the characteristics of the tumorous regions
and take more general and complete pathologic information into account. So it deserves our further research. The results
presented in this paper are preliminary. Further study is required to evaluate the results.

4. CONCLUSIONS
The segmentation of brain tumor is a complex task. In this paper, we present a hybrid method, based on modified
objective function of FCM and spatial information of images. Each input image is initiated by the fuzzy c-means to
segment into four regions. After fuzzy clustering, we use the information of the tissues’ gradient and variance of regions
to improve the quality of segmentation. This segmentation algorithm is evaluated by applying to the MR images of three
patients, and the results show that the segmentation of this method can produce very satisfactory results.

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