Segmentation of brain MR images

Abstract

Segmentation of images holds an important position in the area of image processing. It becomes more important while typically dealing with medical images where pre-surgery and post surgery decisions are required for the purpose of initiating and speeding up the recovery process (noodle.med.yale.edu 1993). Computer aided detection of abnormal growth of tissues is primarily motivated by the necessity of achieving maximum possible accuracy. Manual segmentation of these abnormal tissues cannot be compared with modern day’s high speed computing machines which enable us to visually observe the volume and location of unwanted tissues. A well known segmentation problem within MRI is the task of labeling voxels according to their tissue type which include White Matter (WM), Grey Matter (GM), Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) and sometimes pathological tissues like tumor etc. This chapter describes an efficient method for automatic brain tumor segmentation for the extraction of tumor tissues from MR images. It combines Perona and Malik (1990) anisotropic diffusion model for image enhancement and Kmeans clustering technique for grouping tissues belonging to a specific group. The proposed method uses T1, T2 and PD weighted gray level intensity images. The proposed technique produced appreciative results.