A Novel Image Segmentation Method Based on Improved Intuitionistic Fuzzy C-Means Clustering Algorithm

Segmentation plays an important role in the field of image processing and computer vision. Intuitionistic fuzzy C-means (IFCM) clustering algorithm emerged as an effective technique for image segmentation in recent years. However, standard fuzzy C-means (FCM) and IFCM algorithms are sensitive to noise and initial cluster centers, and they ignore the spatial relationship of pixels. In view of these shortcomings, an improved algorithm based on IFCM is proposed in this paper. Firstly, we propose a modified non-membership function to generate intuitionistic fuzzy set and a method of determining initial clustering centers based on grayscale features, they highlight the effect of uncertainty in intuitionistic fuzzy set and improve the robustness to noise. Secondly, an improved nonlinear kernel function is proposed to map data into kernel space to measure the distance between data and the cluster centers more accurately. Thirdly, the local spatial-gray information measure is introduced, which considers membership degree, gray features and spatial position information at the same time. Finally, we propose a new measure of intuitionistic fuzzy entropy, it takes into account fuzziness and intuition of intuitionistic fuzzy set. The experimental results show that compared with other IFCM based algorithms, the proposed algorithm has better segmentation and clustering performance.