Nonsubsampled Contourlet Transform Based
Expe c tation Maximization Method for
Segmentation of Images
R.Meena Prakash
Assistant Professor/ECE
P.S.R.Engineering College, Sivakasi, India
Email: eshwari_2000@rediffmail.com
Abstract-In this paper, a new algorithm for Gaussian Mix­
ture Model based image segmenta tion is presented. The pro­
posed method is an extension to traditional Gaussian Mixtures
I<:xpectation-Maximization Segmentation. The standard Gaussian
:Vlixture �lo del( GMM) is the most widely used method for image
segm enta tion where the model parameters can be estimated by
the Expectation Maximization algorithm. The Ga uss ian Mixture
�Iodel considers each pixel as independent and does not take
into account the s patia l correlation bctwecn the neighbour ing
pixels. Hence the segmentation result obtained using standard
GMM is highly sensith'e to no ise. In this paper, the Nonsub­
sampled Contour let Transform i s employed to overcome this
drawback.The N onsumsampled conto urle t transfo rm employs a
trous filters for pyramidal decomposition which are isotropic and
shi ft invariant. The a trous algorithm uses a low pass filter to
obtain successive approximations of the original image. The low
pass output of the nonsubsampled contourlet transform incor­
porates the spatial correlation between the neighboring pixels
and hence gives better segmentation accuracy when subjected to
Expe ctation Maximization. The prese nted algori thm is used to
segment syntheti c images and real images with regions of varying
pixel intensiti es . T he pe rformance of the algorithm is com pared
with the s tandard GMM and the recently propose d method
which addresses the pixel labeling problem by replacing each
pixel value in an image with the average value of its nei gh bors
including it..elf. The results suggested that the proposed algori thm
is superior in segmentation accuracy when compared with the
exist ing methods .
Index Tenns- Expectation Maximi zation, Nonsub sampled
Contourlet Transform, spatia l corre lation , pixe l labe ling. Ex­
pectation Maxim ization , Non subsa mple d Contourlet Transform,
spatial correla tion, pixel l abeling. -
r. TNTRODl:CTION
Segmenta tion is the process of d i viding an i mag e into regions
with similar properties s u ch as gray level , col or, texture, b right­
ness, and contrast. The segmentation methods can be classified
into thresholding, region growing, edge detection techniques,
clustering, class ifiers, statistical models, artificial neural net­
works, deformable models and atlas guided approaches. The
statistical model based segmentation methods are now widely
bcing d epl oyed espec iaU y to segment medical images. Statistical
classification method assigns a cla..s label to a pixel by considering
each pi xel as random variable whose probability density function
is a gaussian function. The mod el parameters, mean and \'ariance
can be estimated using the Expect at ion �Iaximization algorithm.
The EM al gorithm interleaves pixel classification with estimation
978-1-4673-2322-21121$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
R.Shanlha Selva Kumari
Professor/ECE
Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi, India
Email: Csskp@yahoo.com
of class distribution parameters, improving the likelihood of the
parameters at each iteration. The st andard GMM and E�l for
estimating the model parameters is wid esprea d method lor image
segmentation. The drawbacks of the method are that it is sensitive
to noise and it does not take into account the spatial correlati on
betwe en the pix els . One of the m etho ds adapted to include
spatial relat ionship is the Markov Random Field.[3], [4] , [5].Due
to the directionality, anisotropy and shift invariant properties,
the Nonsubs amp led Contourlet Transform is being em ployed
successfully for segmentation and denoising applications such as
texture image cla'isification, Classification of Microcalcification in
Mammograms, Watermarking techniqu e, infrared image denois­
ing and other s and shown to obtain improv ed p erformanc e when
compared to wavelets and other methods.[7], [8], [9], [10]. In this
paper, N onsubsampl ed C ontourlet Transform is employed which
uses Nonsubsampled Pyramid for the multiscal ing property. The
low pass band resulting from the N onsub sampled pyramid is
s ubj ected to EM segmentation for image segmentation. The
proposed method ou tper forms the existing methods in literature.
Qu a ntitati ve perform ance im provemen t is shown over the con­
ventional EM segmentation and also over the recently proposed
method of replacing each pixel value in an im age with the average
value of its neighbor s.
II. GAUSSIAN MIXTURE MODEL AND EM SEGMENTATION
The I<:M algorithm is a general technique for finding Maximum
Likelihood parameter estimates ill prob lems with hidden data
[1], [2]. It first estimates the hidden data based on the current
parameter estimates. The initial parameters, mean and variance
of the classes are calculated from the histogram of the image.
The esti mated comple ted da ta consisti ng 01' both observed and
hidden data are then used to estimate the parameters through
maximizing the likelihood of the compl ete data. It consists of two
steps E step and M step. The E step computes expectation of the
unobserved data. The M step compu t es Maximum Likelihood
estimates of the unknown parameters. The process i s re p eated
until it converges . The likelihood increa'ies with each iteration.
For segmentatiton problem, the observed dat a are th e signal
intensities, the missing data are the classification of images,
and the parameters are class-conditional intensity distribution
parameters. Each voxcl value is selected at random from one of
K classes. The EM algorithm then interleaves class-conditional
pa ram eter estimation and it performs statistical classification
of the image voxel into K cl ass es. Each class is modeled by a
normal distribution G <1 (y -!J.) with mean p, and variance (72. The
probab ility density that class j has generated the voxel value Yi
137
at position i is
with riE{j/j = 1...K} the tissue class at position i and (}j =
{ttj, CTj}, the distribution parameters for class j. Defining () =
{(}j} as the model parameters, the overall probability density for
Yi is
which is a mixture of normal distributions. Since all the voxel
intensities are assumed to be statistically independent, the prob­
ability density for the image y given the model is
p(Y/(}) = IT(p(yd(}))
The maximum likelihood estimates for the parameters
CTj can be found by maximization of p(y/(}), equivalent to
minimization of - Liloge(p(Yd(})). The expression for
given by the condition that
8
(- Llog/�=p(ydri=j, (}j)p(ri=j))) = 0 (4)
8 .
tt] ,. .
]
Differentiating and substituting p(Yi/ri=j, (}j by the Gaussian
distribution (1) yields
where Bayes' rule was used.
- - . ()) - p(ydri=j, (}j)p(ri=j)
p(r J ;y
,- " L/p(ydri=j, (}j)p(ri=j)
Rearranging the terms yields the expression for ttj.
L YiP(ri=j fYi, (})
ttj = i
. (7)
Li p(ri=J fYi, (})
L P(ri=j/Yi, (})(Yi - ttd
CTj = i
2
LiP(ri=j/Yi, (})
Equation 6 performs classification while 7 and 8 are parameter
estimates. The algorithm fills in the missing data during step 1
and then finds the parameters that maximize the likelihood for
the complete data during step 2. The likelihood is guaranteed
to increase at each iteration. The method is simple when
compared to other segmentation methods like fuzzy classification,
deformable model etc.,. The drawbacks observed in the method
are that it treats each pixel as independent and it does not take
into account the spatial relationship between pixels. This leads
to misclassification of the pixels to different classes and hence
the observed accuracy is low. Also if the noise level and intensity
in-homogeneity increase, the accuracy decreases rapidly.
III. NONSUBSAMPLED CONTOURLET TRANSFORM
An efficient image representation should be based on local,
multidirectional and multiresolution expansion. Multiresolution
implies that the representation should allow images to be succes­
sively approximated, from coarse to fine resolutions. Directional­
ity means that the representation should contain basis elements
oriented at a variety of directions. With these properties, the
Contourlet Transform captures the intrinsic geometric struc­
ture that is key in visual information. A double filter bank
structure is used in the Contourlet Transform. The Laplacian
Pyramid is first used to capture the point discontinuities and
the Directional filter bank is used to link point discontinuities
138
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.,...-..._-+
. 2...,.---,i
.. 1r , 1r)
(1)
'mooo
WI
-..
(2) __�+-:�-I dlr.cHonol
w,.,."'"
(a) (b)
Fig. I. Nonsubsampled Contourlet Transform
(3)
ttj and
ttj is
Fig. 2. Ideal Frequency Response of the Building Block of Nonsubsampled
Pyramid
(5)
into linear structures. The Contourlet Transform is not shift
invariant due to downsamplers and upsamplers present in both
the Laplacian Pyramid and Directional Filter Bank. The lack
of shift invariance causes Pseudo-Gibbs phenomena around
(6) singularities. The Nonsubsampled Contourlet Transform is shift
invariant, multi scale and multi direction expansion that has
a fast implementation. The NSCT is shift-invariant such that
each pixel of the transform subbands corresponds to that of the
original image in the same location. Therefore, the geometric
information can be obtained pixel by pixel from the NSCT
coefficients.[17], [18], [19] The NSCT is constructed by combining
non sub sampled pyramids and non sub sampled directional filter
(8) banks as shown in fig (1). The Nonsubsampled pyramid structure
results the multi scale property. The Nonsubsampled directional
filter bank results the directional property. The NSCT has similar
subband decomposition as that of contourlets but without up
samplers and down samplers. The multiscale property of the
NSCT is obtained from the shift-invariant filtering structures
that achieves subband decomposition similar to that of Laplacian
Pyramid[14], [IS], [16].
IV. METHOD
A. NSCT based EM Segmentation
The building block of the Nonsubsampled pyramid is a two
channel Nonsubsampled filter bank shown in figure(2). A non­
subsampled filter bank has no downsampling or upsampling and
hence it is shift invariant.The perfect reconstruction condition is
given as
(9)
Multiscale decomposition is achieved by iterated nonsubsampled
filter banks. For the next level, all the filters are upsampled
by 2 in both the dimensions. Therefore they also satisfy the
perfect reconstruction condition. The standard GMM considers
each pixel as independent and does not take into account the
spatial correlation between the neighboring pixels. The proposed
algorithm effectively utilizes the nonsubsampled pyramid de­
compositon to incorporate the spatial correlation between the
neighbouring pixels. Depending upon the level of noise and RF
 TABLE I
Inp ut image PERFORMANCE COMPARISON WITH PARAMETER
MISCLASSIFICATION RATIO IN % OF THE PROPOSED METHOD
TO OTHER METHODS FOR SYNTHETIC IMAGES

Methods FCM StandardGMM SVFMM Ref.6 Proposed Method

Image 1 10.29 14.31 4.13 2.08 1.9
Image2 4.51 6.71 1.31 0.39 0.5
Image3 4.17 11.38 1.13 0.31 0
Obtain the low pass sub band

Labeling of pixels into

various classes (a) (b) (e) (d)

Fig. 4. Synthetic Image 1 (a)original image(b)image added with gaussian

Fig. 3. Algorithm noise(O mean and 0.05 variance)(c)Standard GMM(d)proposed Method

inhomogeneity present, the level of decomposition may be chosen.
The nonsubsampled pyramidal filter bank uses two dimensional
atrous filters for pyramid decomposition.
B. Algorithm Steps
The algorithm is summarized in the following steps.
1. The Nonsubsampled Pyramidal Decomposition is applied to
decompose the image into low pass subband and band pass
directional subbands.
2. Then the Expectation Maximization algorithm is applied to
the low pass subband to segment the image into the constituent
regions.
classes with luminance values [0.25,0.5,0.75,1]. Similar to the first
image, noise is added and the segmentation results are obtained
using standard GMM and the proposed method. The results are
shown in fig.5. The synthetic image 3 has three classes with
luminance values [1/3,2/3,1]. The segmentation results using the
proposed method shows 0% MCR. The execution time calculated
for the synthetic image 3 is 3.36 seconds which is lower as
compared to 13.4 seconds[6].The results are shown in fig.6.
The execution time is reduced by 10 seconds while improving
the accuracy by 0.31%. The proposed method employs only
nonsubsampled pyramidal filter bank for low pass filtering.
Hence the computation cost is very much reduced.

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION B. Segmentation validation using Real Images

The proposed method of segmentation is applied to both The method is tested on the real MR brain image from
synthetic and real images and demonstrated the following: the IBSR Dataset.The MR brain image is segmented into three
1) the accuracy of the proposed segmentation method on three classes; gray matter, white matter and CSF. The MCR obtained
synthetic images; for the Standard GMM is 5.8% while for the proposed method
2) the accuracy of the proposed method on real brain image from MCR is 1.1%.The test image taken from IBSR Dataset is volume
IBSR database; lOO_23Slice15[23], [24]. The results are shown in fig.7.
3) comparison of the accuracy and computation cost with that
of the conventional Expectation Maximization segmentation;
4) comparison of the accuracy and computation cost with that
of the other methods including K-mean, FCM, SVFMM and
the recently proposed method of replacing each pixel with the
average value of its neighbors[6].
The system configuration used is Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
@2.53GHz with 1.98GB of RAM. The algorithm is executed
using Matlab.The parameter used for comparison is the mis­
classification ratio(MCR) which is the number of misclassified
pixels divided by the total number of pixels.The methods used for (a) (b) (c) (d)
performance comparison are fuzzy c-means(FCM)[21], standard
GMM[22], and the method based on Markov random fields­
SVFMM method.[5]and Reference 6.
Fig. 5. Synthetic Image2 (a)original image(b)image added with gaussian
noise(O mean and 0.05 variance)(c)Standard GMM(d)proposed Method
A. Segmentation validation using Synthetic Images
The method is validated on three synthetic images.[6] The TABLE II
synthetic image 1 has five classes with luminance values PERFORMANCE COMPARISON WITH PARAMETER EXECUTION
[0.2,0.4,0.6,0.8,1]. The image shown in fig.4(b) is obtained by TIME OF THE PROPOSED METHOD TO OTHER METHODS FOR
adding Gaussian Noise with ° mean and 0.005 variance to the SYNTHETIC IMAGE 3
original image. Standard GMM is applied to fig.4(b) and the
result obtained is fig.4(c).Fig.4(d)shows the result obtained by Methods StandardGMM Proposed Method
Time(secs) 0.6 3.36
applying the proposed method. The synthetic image 2 has four

139

(a) (b) (c) (d)
Fig. 6. Synthetic Image3 (a)original image(b)image added with gaussian
noise(O mean and 0.05 variance)(c)Standard GMM(d)Proposed Method
(0) (d)
(b) (c)
Fig. 7. Real Image (a)original image(b)manualsegmented image(c)Standard
GMM(d)proposed Method MCR=1.1 %
V I. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new algorithm for GMM based image segmen­
tation is presented.Multiscale data representation is an efficient
method which captures data in hierarchical structures where
each level corresponds to a reduced-resolution approximation.
The Nonsumsampled contourlet transform is one such method
which employs an efficient filter bank structure for decomposition
and reconstruction.Two Dimensional A trous filters are used for
pyramidal decomposition which are isotropic and shift invariant.
The low pass output of the nonsubsampled contourlet transform
incorporates the spatial correlation between the neighboring pix­
els and hence gives better segmentation accuracy when subjected
to Expectation Maximization. The presented algorithm is used
to segment synthetic images and real images with regions of
varying pixel intensities. The performance of the algorithm is
compared with the standard GMM and the recently proposed
method which addresses the pixel labeling problem by replacing
each pixel value in an image with the average value of its
neighbors including itself. The results suggested that the proposed
algorithm is superior in segmentation accuracy when compared
with the existing methods. The result shown an improvement is
segmentation accuracy of about 0.9% for synthetic image 1 and
also it shows 0% misclassificaiton ratio for synthetic image 3.
Also the computation cost is reduced when compared to the other
methods. Under increasing noise consideration, higher levels of
pyramidal decomposition can be used. The proposed method
shows reduced computation cost when compared to the other
methods. Future work is to test the algorithm for increasing
noise considerations and more real images.
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