An automated hybrid approach using clustering and nature inspired optimization technique for improved tumor and tissue segmentation in magnetic resonance brain images

In the domain of human brain image analysis, identification of tumor region and segmentation of tissue structures tend to be a challenging task. Automated segmentation of Magnetic Resonance (MR) brain images would be of great assistance to radiologist, as they minimize the complication evolved due to human interface and offer quicker segmentation results. Automated algorithms offer minimal time duration and lesser manual intervention to a radiologist during clinical diagnosis. Moreover, larger volumes of patient data could be assessed with the aid of an automated algorithm and one such algorithm is proposed through this research to identify the tumor region bounded between normal tissue regions and edema portions. The proposed algorithm offers a better support to a radiologist in the process of diagnosing the pathologies, since; it utilizes both optimization and clustering techniques. Bacteria Foraging Optimization (BFO) and Modified Fuzzy K - Means algorithm (MFKM) are the optimization and clustering techniques used to render efficient MR brain image analysis. The proposed combinational algorithm is compared with Particle Swarm Optimization based Fuzzy C - Means algorithm (PSO based FCM), Modified Fuzzy K Means (MFKM) and conventional FCM algorithm. The suggested methodology is evaluated using the comparison parameters such as sensitivity, Specificity, Jaccard Tanimoto Co - efficient Index (TC) and Dice Overlap Index (DOI), computational time and memory requirement. The algorithm proposed through this paper has produced appreciable values of sensitivity and specificity, which are 97.14% and 93.94%, respectively. Finally, it is found that the proposed BFO based MFKM algorithm offers better MR brain image segmentation and provides extensive support to radiologists. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.