Effective Fuzzy Clustering Algorithm for Abnormal MR Brain Image Segmentation

Clustering approach is widely used in biomedical applications particularly for brain tumor detection in abnormal magnetic resonance (MR) images. Fuzzy clustering using fuzzy C-means (FCM) algorithm proved to be superior over the other clustering approaches in terms of segmentation efficiency. But the major drawback of the FCM algorithm is the huge computational time required for convergence. The effectiveness of the FCM algorithm in terms of computational rate is improved by modifying the cluster center and membership value updation criterion. In this paper, the application of modified FCM algorithm for MR brain tumor detection is explored. Abnormal brain images from four tumor classes namely metastase, meningioma, glioma and astrocytoma are used in this work. A comprehensive feature vector space is used for the segmentation technique. Comparative analysis in terms of segmentation efficiency and convergence rate is performed between the conventional FCM and the modified FCM. Experimental results show superior results for the modified FCM algorithm in terms of the performance measures.