Intuitionistic fuzzy segmentation of medical images

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel and probably the first method, using Attanassov intuitionistic fuzzy set theory to segment blood vessels and also the blood cells in pathological images. This type of segmentation is very important in detecting different types of human diseases, e.g., an increase in the number of vessels may lead to cancer in prostates, mammary, etc. The medical images are not properly illuminated, and segmentation in that case becomes very difficult. A novel image segmentation approach using intuitionistic fuzzy set theory and a new membership function is proposed using restricted equivalence function from automorphisms, for finding the membership values of the pixels of the image. An intuitionistic fuzzy image is constructed using Sugeno type intuitionistic fuzzy generator. Local thresholding is applied to threshold medical images. The results showed a much better performance on poor contrast medical images, where almost all the blood vessels and blood cells are visible properly. There are several fuzzy and intuitionistic fuzzy thresholding methods, but these methods are not related to the medical images. To make a comparison with the proposed method with other thresholding methods, the method is compared with six nonfuzzy, fuzzy, and intuitionistic fuzzy methods.