NCRAMT|June 24-26, 2011|Haldia, India International Journal of Soft Computing and Engineering (IJSCE)

ISSN: 2231-2307, Volume-1, Issue-NCRAMT2011, July 2011

35


AbstractMedical imaging has been an active area of
research where abnormalities are detected non invasively. But
dealing with medical images is a challenging task. Due to the
complexity in the images, many of the structures are hardly
visible; various soft computing techniques are applied by
different researchers to process medical images. In order to
carry out this task, intuitive ways have been found out to
interpret and describe the inherent ambiguity and vagueness in
the medical images in terms of intuitionistic fuzzy set theory.
The efficiency of the use of intuitionistic fuzzy set theory in
medical image processing is demonstrated in the context of
contrast enhancement, segmentation where the performance is
observed to be much better.

I ndex Termsintuitionistic fuzzy set, hesitation degree,
clustering, enhancement.

I. INTRODUCTION
Motivated from Zadehs definition of fuzzy sets theory [1],
where uncertainty or vagueness is considered only in the form
of membership function, different notions of higher-order
fuzzy sets have been presented by various researchers.
Among them, intuitionistic fuzzy sets, proposed by
Atanassov, has been a suitable tool for modelling the
hesitancy arising from imprecise or/and imperfect
information. This hesitation is due to the lack of knowledge or
the personal error in defining the membership function.
Intuitionistic fuzzy sets are defined by two characteristic
functions, namely the membership and the non-membership,
describing the belongingness or non-belongingness of an
element respectively.
Medical images contain uncertainties and intuitionistic fuzzy
set (IFS) considers more number of uncertainties (two), so
IFS will be a good tool in analyzing medical images. The
initial step for medical image processing is the image
enhancement. As many of the structures are not highlighted
properly, so enhancement or pre processing is necessary. If
the image is enhanced properly, post processing results will
be better and accurate. So, after enhancement, segmentation is
carried out for analyzing and diagnosing medical images.
Medical image segmentation refers to the segmentation of
known anatomic structures from medical images. Structures
include organs such as cardiac ventricles or kidneys, lungs,
abnormal lesions such as tumors, clots, and cysts,
pathological cells/blood vessels, as well as other structures
such as bones, vessels, brain structures etc. The overall

Manuscript received May 15, 2011.
Tamalika Chaira, is with Centre for Biomedical Engg., Indian Institute
of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India (e-mail: tamalika @yahoo.com).

objective of such methods is to provide computer-aided
diagnosis that will be used for assisting doctors in evaluating
medical imagery or in recognizing abnormal findings in a
medical image.
II. INTUITIONISTIC FUZZY SET THEORY
A fuzzy set A in a finite set } ..., {
, 2 1 n
x x x X = may be
represented mathematically as:
} ) ( , {( X x x x A
A
e =

where, the function ( ) : [0,1]
A
x X is measure of degree
of belongingness or membership function of an element x in
the finite set X and the measure of non-belongingness is
1 ( )
A
x .
Attanassov [2] suggested that while defining the membership
degree, there may be some hesitation, which arises due to the
lack of knowledge in. So, with the introduction of hesitation
degree, ) (x
A
t , non-membership degree is not the
complement the membership degree as in fuzzy set, rather less
than or equal the complement of membership degree. An
intuitionistic fuzzy set A in a finite set X may be
mathematically represented as:

} | )) ( ), ( , {( X x x x x A
A A
e = v
where, ] 1 , 0 [ : ) ( ), ( X x x
A A
v are respectively the
membership and the non-membership functions of an element
x with the necessary condition
1 ) ( ) ( 0 s + s x x
A A
v and
1 ) ( ) ( ) ( = + + x x x
A A A
v t

III. PROCESSING OF MEDICAL IMAGES
Image enhancement is necessary before processing.
Enhancement increases the contrast of the image. The darker
regions will be darker and brighter regions will be more
brighter. Enhancement may be carried out using
non-fuzzy/fuzzy/intuitionistic fuzzy set to highlight the
important structures of the image. But enhancement of
medical images using IFS gives better result as it considers
more number of uncertainties that may be suitable to medical
images as medical images also contain many uncertainties. An
example on image enhancement is shown using
fuzzy/intuitionistic fuzzy set theory. Fig. 1 is an image of a
prostate. With fuzzy INT operator [4], the
Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Theory in Medical
Imaging
Tamalika Chaira

Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Theory in Medical Imaging

36
regions are not visible where as using IFS [3], it is observed
that all the regions are visible properly and clearly.












After pre processing, the images are segmented to separate
different regions of interest such as tumor, abnormal lesions,
blood vessels/cells and so on. Segmentation includes
thresholding, clustering, and edge detection and it depends on
the type of application.
Thresholding - There are lots of methods on image
thresholding using non-fuzzy/fuzzy techniques. It is a simple,
fast and a robust segmentation technique But no such
technique is there that accurately threshold the medical
images. An example on image thresholding by Chaira [5]
using IFS is shown in Fig. 2. where blood vessels are clearly
segmented from a poorly illuminated image as compared to
the non-fuzzy/fuzzy methods. Counting of blood vessels is a
very difficult task and it is necessary for the pathologists in the
detection of various diseases such as angiogenesis, infection
so on. It uses a novel IFS divergence measure and a
membership function. In this method, a window based
thresholding is used where the image is divided into several
windows and then thresholding is carried out for each
windows. The IFS method is compared with other fuzzy and
non fuzzy methods and is observed that using IFS method,
almost the blood vessels are visible.





















Clustering is also a type of segmentation where the image is
divided into several regions introduced by Bezdek [9]. It
groups similar pixels into one cluster and different pixels in
different cluster based on some similarity measure. Thus there
is similarity of pixels among the clusters and dissimilarity of
pixels in different clusters. So, when any abnormal regions are
required to detect, clustering algorithm is a suitable method
that separates the abnormal region present in the image.
Clustering can be done using crisp or fuzzy. In
non-fuzzy/crisp clustering, each pixel present in a distinct
cluster i.e. 0 or 1. But in fuzzy clustering, pixels may belong
to several clusters and membership value is associated to each
pixel. It considers the vagueness of the boundary.
Intuitionistic fuzzy method considers the hesitation in the
membership function in the fuzzy clustering method. An
example on image clustering [6] is shown in Fig 3 using
fuzzy/intuitionistic fuzzy set where blood cells are clearly
clustered using IFS with almost no noise.
























Edge detection is another type of segmentation, which is
required to detect the boundaries of any abnormal
regions/lesions. This information is widely used in
computer-aided diagnosis, localization of pathological tissue,
study of anatomical structures. Up till now there are many
methods such as curve fitting methods, statistical methods but
Cannys method [7] is an optimal edge detector. From the
edges, morphological parameters such as area, perimeter,
curvature can be evaluated. In medical images, there are many
unwanted structures, so direct applying Cannys edge detector
does not give better result. A better result is expected, if
clustering is followed by histogram thresholding and then
edge detection to find the exact region of interest. Clustering
clusters the image into different regions, histogram
thresholding selects the wanted lesions and then edge detector
detects the edges of that lesion. An example [8] is shown in
Fig. 4 where the tumour image is clustered, thresholded, and
then edge detected to detect the exact boundary of the tumour
in the brain. Simultaneously, the morphological parameters
are computed which will help the doctors and physicians to
come to a successful decision.






Fig. 1 (a) Image, b) enhancement using INT operator,
c) intuitionistic fuzzy enhancement
(c) (b) (a)
Fig. 3: a) blood cell image, b) FCM cluster, c) intuitionistic
fuzzy cluster
(b)
(a)
(c)

Fig. 2: a) Original image, b) Robert method, c) fuzzy
method, d) Intuitionistic method

(c)
(d)
(a) (b)

NCRAMT|June 24-26, 2011|Haldia, India International Journal of Soft Computing and Engineering (IJSCE)
ISSN: 2231-2307, Volume-1, Issue-NCRAMT2011, July 2011
37


























IV. CONCLUSION
This paper provides the usefulness of IFS theory in
medical image processing. It is observed that the results using
IFS is much better than the fuzzy/non fuzzy set theory. The
reason for obtaining better results is that in fuzzy set theory,
the only uncertainty is the membership function. IFS
considers more number of uncertainties (membership
function and the hesitation degree), and as the medical images
are low contrasted, with vague region/boundaries, IFS gives
better result. Thus, when membership function is not always
accurately defined due to the lack of personal error, an
intuitionistic fuzzy set may help in solving the problem
conclusion section is not required.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Author would like to acknowledge the Department of
Science and Technology for carrying out the work under the
scheme DST-SERC Fast Track for young scientist.
REFERENCES
[1] L.A. Zadeh, Fuzzy Sets : Information and Control, 8, pp.338-353,
1965.
[2] K.T. Atanassov, Intuitionistic fuzzy set, Fuzzy Sets and Systems 20
(1986) 87-97.
[3] I.K.Vlachos, G.D.Sergiadis, Role of entropy in intuitionistic fuzzy
contrast enhancement, Lecture notes in artificial intelligence- 4529,
pp. 104-113, Springer, 2007.
[4] T. Acharya, A.K. Ray, Image processing: Principles and application.
Wiley, 2005.
[5] T. Chaira, Intuitionistic fuzzy segmentation of medical images, IEEE
Transaction of Biomedical Engineering, vol. 57, No. 6 (2010)
1430-1436.
[6] T. Chaira, Intuitionistic fuzzy color clustering of medical images,
Proc. of IEEE, World Congress on Nature and Biologically inspired
soft computing (Coimbatore), (2009).
[7] J.Canny, Computational approach to edge detection, IEEE
Transaction on PAMI 8(6), (1986), 679-698.
[8] T. Chaira, , S. Anand, A novel intuitionistic fuzzy approach for
tumour/hemorrhage detection in medical images. Journal of scientific
and industrial research (2011) (accepted).,
[9] J.C. Bezdek, , L.O.. Hall, and L.P. Clark.,Review of MR segmentation
technique in pattern recognition, Med Phy,10:20, pp.33-48, 1993 .



Tamalika Chaira rerceived her Bachelar degree from Bihar Institute of
Technology, Sindri, Jharkhand, Masters from Bengal Engineering and
Science university from Electronics and Communication Department. She
obtained her PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in image
processing (Electronics and Communication) in the year 2003. Her research
interest is medical imaging that includes image enhancement, segmentation,
clustering using fuzzy/intuitionistic fuzzy set theory. Currently she is a
young Scientist of DST, Govt. of India working with the Centre for
Biomedical Engg., Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
She is an author of a book on Fuzzy image processing and application
with MATLAB with CRC press, 2009. She has 1 US patent and published
several papers in international IEEE and Elsevier journals. She is also a
reviewer of several international journal.
She has received an young scientist award from Department of Science
and Technology 2007 (Fast Track scheme for young scientist).
She has also received a prestigious National award (IYBA 2010),
Innovative young Biotechnologist award from Department of
Biotechnology, Govt. of India.



(b)
Fig.4 a) CT scan tumor image, b) edge of the tumour using
IFS method, c) edge detected image using IFS method

(a)
(c)