Three-Phase Automatic Brain Tumor Diagnosis System Using Patches Based Updated Run Length Region Growing Technique

J Digit Imaging. 2020 Apr;33(2):465-479. doi: 10.1007/s10278-019-00276-2.

Abstract

Manually finding and segmenting brain tumor is a tedious process in MR brain images due to the unpredictable appearance of tissues with a different pattern, contour, mass, and positions. The proposed work has three phases automatic tumor diagnosis system for tumorous slice detection, segmentation, and visualization from MRI human head volumes. The proposed method has an automatic classification followed by segmentation and is called as patch-based updated run length region growing technique (PR2G). In the first phase, classification is done through training and testing process using SVM classifier with 8 × 8 patches. Three optimal features are chosen using infinite feature selection (IFS) method. The purpose of the first phase is to automatically cluster the input MRI image into a normal or tumorous slice and localize the tumor. The second phase aims to segment the tumor in abnormal tumorous slices identified by the first phase using run length region growing technique. Finally, the third phase contains a post metric evaluation like 3D tumor volume construction and estimation from actual and segmented tumor volume using Carelieri's estimator. Classification accuracy is measured using sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and error rates also calculated using false alarm (FA) and missed alarm (MA). Segmentation accuracy is calculated using Dice similarity, positive predictive value (PPV), sensitivity, and accuracy. Datasets used for this experiment are collected from whole brain atlas (WBA) and BraTS repositories. Experimental results show that the PR2G achieves 97% of classification accuracy and 80% of Dice segmentation accuracy.

Keywords: BraTS dataset; Brain tumor; Feature extraction; Region growing; Run length; Tumor detection; Tumor patches.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Algorithms
  • Brain / diagnostic imaging
  • Brain Neoplasms* / diagnostic imaging
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Young Adult