Fast FCM with spatial neighborhood information for brain MR image segmentation

Among different segmentation approaches Fuzzy c-Means clustering (FCM) is a welldeveloped algorithm for medical image segmentation. In emergency medical applications quick convergence of FCM is necessary. On the other hand spatial information is seldom exploited in standard FCM; therefore nuisance factors can simply affect it and cause misclassification. This paper aims to introduce a Fast FCM (FFCM) technique by incorporation of spatial neighborhood information which is exploited by a linear function on fuzzy membership. Applying proposed spatial Fast FCM (sFFCM), elapsed time is decreased and neighborhood spatial information is exploited in FFCM. Moreover, iteration numbers by proposed FFCM/sFFCM techniques are decreased efficiently. The FCM/FFCM techniques are examined on both simulated and real MR images. Furthermore, to considerably decrease of convergence time and iterations number, cluster centroids are initialized by an algorithm. Accuracy of the new approach is same as standard FCM. The quantitative assessments of presented FCM/FFCM techniques are evaluated by conventional validity functions. Experimental results demonstrate that sFFCM techniques efficiently handle noise interference and significantly decrease elapsed time.