A Robust Fuzzy Clustering Technique with Spatial Neighborhood Information for Effective Medical Image Segmentation

Medical image segmentation demands an efficient and robust segmentation algorithm against noise. The conventional fuzzy c-means algorithm is an efficient clustering algorithm that is used in medical image segmentation. But FCM is highly vulnerable to noise since it uses only intensity values for clustering the images. This paper aims to develop a novel and efficient fuzzy spatial c-means clustering algorithm which is robust to noise. The proposed clustering algorithm uses fuzzy spatial information to calculate membership value. The input image is clustered using proposed ISFCM algorithm. A comparative study has been made between the conventional FCM and proposed ISFCM. The proposed approach is found to be outperforming the conventional FCM. Index Terms clustering, fuzzy c-means, image segmentation, membership function.