Superpixel-based brain tumor segmentation in MR images using an extended local fuzzy active contour model

Abstract

In this paper, to deal with poor boundaries in the presence of noise and heterogeneity of magnetic resonance (MR) images, a new region-based fuzzy active contour model based on techniques of curve evolution is introduced for the brain tumor segmentation. On the other hand, since brain MR images intrinsically contain significant amounts of dark areas such as cerebrospinal fluid, therefore for properly declining the heterogeneity of classes and better segmentation results, the proposed fuzzy energy-based function has been extended to consider three distinct regions; target, dark tissues with a dark background and the rest of the foreground. Moreover, due to the inevitable dependency of pixel-based models on the initial contour, artifact, and inhomogeneity of MR images, we have used superpixels as basic atomic units not only to reduce the sensitivity to the mentioned factors but also to reduce the computational cost of the algorithm. Results show that the proposed method outperforms the accuracy of the state-of-the-art models in both real and synthetic brain MR images.