A Kernel Fuzzy Clustering Algorithm with Spatial Constraint Based on Improved Expectation Maximization for Image Segmentation

In this paper, an unsupervised image segmentation algorithm is proposed, which combines spatial constraints with a kernel fuzzy c-means (KFCM) clustering algorithm. Conventional KFCM clustering segmentation algorithm does not incorporate the spatial context information of image, which makes it sensitive to the noise and intensity variations. In order to overcome the shortcomings, the contents of image is characterized by Gaussian mixture model, and the parameters of model are estimated by modified expectation maximization (EM) algorithm, which overcomes the classical EM algorithm drawbacks that easily trap in local maxima and be susceptible to initial value. According to the maximum a posterior theorem, we can get the pixel maximum posterior probability. We redefine the objective function of the KFCM algorithm which incorporates the pixel maximum posteriori probability, by minimizing the fuzzy objective function, the fuzzy segmentation algorithm is derived. The experimental results on a synthetic image and a real magnetic resonance image show that the proposed algorithm is more effective than the conventional FCM algorithm without local spatial constraints.