Segmentation of articular cartilage and early osteoarthritis based on the fuzzy soft thresholding approach driven by modified evolutionary ABC optimization and local statistical aggregation

Articular cartilage assessment, with the aim of the cartilage loss identification, is a crucial task for the clinical practice of orthopedics. Conventional software (SW) instruments allow for just a visualization of the knee structure, without post processing, offering objective cartilage modeling. In this paper, we propose the multiregional segmentation method, having ambitions to bring a mathematical model reflecting the physiological cartilage morphological structure and spots, corresponding with the early cartilage loss, which is poorly recognizable by the naked eye from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The proposed segmentation model is composed from two pixel's classification parts. Firstly, the image histogram is decomposed by using a sequence of the triangular fuzzy membership functions, when their localization is driven by the modified artificial bee colony (ABC) optimization algorithm, utilizing a random sequence of considered solutions based on the real cartilage features. In the second part of the segmentation model, the original pixel's membership in a respective segmentation class may be modified by using the local statistical aggregation, taking into account the spatial relationships regarding adjacent pixels. By this way, the image noise and artefacts, which are commonly presented in the MR images, may be identified and eliminated. This fact makes the model robust and sensitive with regards to distorting signals. We analyzed the proposed model on the 2D spatial MR image records. We show different MR clinical cases for the articular cartilage segmentation, with identification of the cartilage loss. In the final part of the analysis, we compared our model performance against the selected conventional methods in application on the MR image records being corrupted by additive image noise.Web of Science117art. no. 86

Segmentation of ultrasound images of thyroid nodule for assisting fine needle aspiration cytology

The incidence of thyroid nodule is very high and generally increases with the age. Thyroid nodule may presage the emergence of thyroid cancer. The thyroid nodule can be completely cured if detected early. Fine needle aspiration cytology is a recognized early diagnosis method of thyroid nodule. There are still some limitations in the fine needle aspiration cytology, and the ultrasound diagnosis of thyroid nodule has become the first choice for auxiliary examination of thyroid nodular disease. If we could combine medical imaging technology and fine needle aspiration cytology, the diagnostic rate of thyroid nodule would be improved significantly. The properties of ultrasound will degrade the image quality, which makes it difficult to recognize the edges for physicians. Image segmentation technique based on graph theory has become a research hotspot at present. Normalized cut (Ncut) is a representative one, which is suitable for segmentation of feature parts of medical image. However, how to solve the normalized cut has become a problem, which needs large memory capacity and heavy calculation of weight matrix. It always generates over segmentation or less segmentation which leads to inaccurate in the segmentation. The speckle noise in B ultrasound image of thyroid tumor makes the quality of the image deteriorate. In the light of this characteristic, we combine the anisotropic diffusion model with the normalized cut in this paper. After the enhancement of anisotropic diffusion model, it removes the noise in the B ultrasound image while preserves the important edges and local details. This reduces the amount of computation in constructing the weight matrix of the improved normalized cut and improves the accuracy of the final segmentation results. The feasibility of the method is proved by the experimental results.Comment: 15pages,13figure

Brain MR Image Segmentation Based on an Adaptive Combination of Global and Local Fuzzy Energy

This paper presents a novel fuzzy algorithm for segmentation of brain MR images and simultaneous estimation of intensity inhomogeneity. The proposed algorithm defines an objective function including a local fuzzy energy and a global fuzzy energy. Based on the assumption that the local image intensities belonging to each different tissue satisfy Gaussian distributions with different means, we derive the local fuzzy energy by utilizing maximum a posterior probability (MAP) and Bayes rule. The global fuzzy energy is defined by measuring the distance between the original image and the corresponding inhomogeneity-free image. We combine the global fuzzy energy with the local fuzzy energy using an adaptive weight function whose value varies with the local contrast of the image. This combination enables the proposed algorithm to address intensity inhomogeneity and to improve the accuracy of segmentation and its robustness to initialization. Besides, the proposed algorithm incorporates neighborhood spatial information into the membership function to reduce the impact of noise. Experimental results for synthetic and real images validate the desirable performances of the proposed algorithm

An Automatic Level Set Based Liver Segmentation from MRI Data Sets

A fast and accurate liver segmentation method is a challenging work in medical image analysis area. Liver segmentation is an important process for computer-assisted diagnosis, pre-evaluation of liver transplantation and therapy planning of liver tumors. There are several advantages of magnetic resonance imaging such as free form ionizing radiation and good contrast visualization of soft tissue. Also, innovations in recent technology and image acquisition techniques have made magnetic resonance imaging a major tool in modern medicine. However, the use of magnetic resonance images for liver segmentation has been slow when we compare applications with the central nervous systems and musculoskeletal. The reasons are irregular shape, size and position of the liver, contrast agent effects and similarities of the gray values of neighbor organs. Therefore, in this study, we present a fully automatic liver segmentation method by using an approximation of the level set based contour evolution from T2 weighted magnetic resonance data sets. The method avoids solving partial differential equations and applies only integer operations with a two-cycle segmentation algorithm. The efficiency of the proposed approach is achieved by applying the algorithm to all slices with a constant number of iteration and performing the contour evolution without any user defined initial contour. The obtained results are evaluated with four different similarity measures and they show that the automatic segmentation approach gives successful results

Markov mezők a képmodellezésben, alkalmazásuk az automatikus képszegmentálás területén = Markovian Image Models: Applications in Unsupervised Image Segmentation

1) Kifejlesztettünk egy olyan szín és textúra alapú szegmentáló MRF algoritmust, amely alkalmas egy kép automatikus szegmentálását elvégezni. Az eredményeinket az Image and Vision Computing folyóiratban publikáltuk. 2) Kifejlesztettünk egy Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo technikán alapuló automatikus képszegmentáló eljárást, melyet sikeresen alkalmaztunk színes képek teljesen automatikus szegmentálására. Az eredményeinket a BMVC 2004 konferencián és az Image and Vision Computing folyóiratban publikáltuk. 3) A modell többrétegű továbbfejlesztését alkalmaztuk video objektumok szín és mozgás alapú szegmentálására, melynek eredményeit a HACIPPR 2005 illetve az ACCV 2006 nemzetközi konferenciákon publikáltuk. Szintén ehhez az alapproblémához kapcsolódik Horváth Péter hallgatómmal az optic flow szamításával illetve szín, textúra és mozgás alapú GVF aktív kontúrral kapcsoltos munkáink. TDK dolgozata első helyezést ért el a 2004-es helyi versenyen, az eredményeinket pedig a KEPAF 2004 konferencián publikáltuk. 4) Horváth Péter PhD hallgatómmal illetve az franciaországi INRIA Ariana csoportjával, kidolgoztunk egy olyan képszegmentáló eljárást, amely a szegmentálandó objektum alakját is figyelembe veszi. Az eredményeinket az ICPR 2006 illetve az ICCVGIP 2006 konferencián foglaltuk össze. A modell előzményeként kidolgoztunk továbbá egy alakzat-momemntumokon alapuló aktív kontúr modellt, amelyet a HACIPPR 2005 konferencián publikáltunk. | 1) We have proposed a monogrid MRF model which is able to combine color and texture features in order to improve the quality of segmentation results. We have also solved the estimation of model parameters. This work has been published in the Image and Vision Computing journal. 2) We have proposed an RJMCMC sampling method which is able to identify multi-dimensional Gaussian mixtures. Using this technique, we have developed a fully automatic color image segmentation algorithm. Our results have been published at BMVC 2004 international conference and in the Image and Vision Computing journal. 3) A new multilayer MRF model has been proposed which is able to segment an image based on multiple cues (such as color, texture, or motion). This work has been published at HACIPPR 2005 and ACCV 2006 international conferences. The work on optic flow computation and color-, texture-, and motion-based GVF active contours doen with my student, Mr. Peter Horvath, won a first price at the local Student Research Competition in 2004. Results have been presented at KEPAF 2004 conference. 4) A new shape prior, called 'gas of circles' has been introduced using active contour models. This work is done in collaboration with the Ariana group of INRIA, France and my PhD student, Mr. Peter Horvath. Results are published at the ICPR 2006 and ICCVGIP 2006 conferences. A preliminary study on active contour models using shape-moments has also been done, these results are published at HACIPPR 2005