To extract region of interests (ROI) in brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with more than two objects and improve the segmentation accuracy, a hybrid model of a kernel-based fuzzy c-means(KFCM) clustering algorithm and Chan-Vese (CV) model for brain MRI segmentation is proposed. The approach consists of two successive stages. Firstly, the KFCM is used to make a coarse segmentation, which achieves the automatic selection of initial contour. Then an improved CV model is utilized to subdivide the image. Fuzzy membership degree from KFCM clustering is incorporated into the fidelity term of the 2-phase piecewise constant CV model to obtain accurate multi-object segmentation. Experimental results show that the proposed model has advantages both in accuracy and in robustness to noise in comparison with fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering, KFCM, and the hybrid model of FCM and CV on brain MRI segmentation.
The image segmentation difficulties of small objects which are much smaller than their background often occur in target detection and recognition. The existing threshold segmentation methods almost fail under the circumstances. Thus, a threshold selection method is proposed on the basis of area difference between background and object and intra-class variance. The threshold selection formulae based on one-dimensional (1-D) histogram, two-dimensional (2-D) histogram vertical segmentation and 2-D histogram oblique segmentation are given. A fast recursive algorithm of threshold selection in 2-D histogram oblique segmentation is derived. The segmented images and processing time of the proposed method are given in experiments. It is compared with some fast algorithms, such as Otsu, maximum entropy and Fisher threshold selection methods. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively segment the small object images and has better anti-noise property.
