Robust information gain based fuzzy c-means clustering and classification of carotid artery ultrasound images

In this paper, a robust method is proposed for segmentation of medical images by exploiting the concept of information gain. Medical images contain inherent noise due to imaging equipment, operating environment and patient movement during image acquisition. A robust medical image segmentation technique is thus inevitable for accurate results in subsequent stages. The clustering technique proposed in this work updates fuzzy membership values and cluster centroids based on information gain computed from the local neighborhood of a pixel. The proposed approach is less sensitive to noise and produces homogeneous clustering. Experiments are performed on medical and non-medical images and results are compared with state of the art segmentation approaches. Analysis of visual and quantitative results verifies that the proposed approach outperforms other techniques both on noisy and noise free images. Furthermore, the proposed technique is used to segment a dataset of 300 real carotid artery ultrasound images. A decision system for plaque detection in the carotid artery is then proposed. Intima media thickness (IMT) is measured from the segmented images produced by the proposed approach. A feature vector based on IMT values is constructed for making decision about the presence of plaque in carotid artery using probabilistic neural network (PNN). The proposed decision system detects plaque in carotid artery images with high accuracy. Finally, effect of the proposed segmentation technique has also been investigated on classification of carotid artery ultrasound images. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.