International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue5- May 2013

Boundary detection in Medical Images using Edge Field Vector based on Laws Texture and Canny Method
Swetha.M1 Jyohsna.C2
Department of E&C, KLS VDRIT, Haliyal Karnataka, india

Abstract detecting the correct boundary in noisy images is a difficult task. Images are used in many fields,including surveillance, medical diagnostics and non-destrucive testing. Edge detection and boundary detection plays a fundamental role in image analysis. Boundaries are mainly used to detect the outline or shape of the object.image segmentation is used to locate objects and boundaries in images and it assigns a lable in every pixel in an image such that pixels with the same level share have certain virtual characteristics. The proposed edge detection technique for detecting the boundaries of object using the information from intensity gradient using the vector model and texture gradient using the edge map modle.the results show that the technique performs very well and yields better performance than the classical contour models. The proposed method is robust and applicable on various kind of noisy images without prior knowledge of noise properties. Keywords Boundary extraction, vector field model, edge mapping model, edge following technique, boundary detection.

I.

INTRODUCTION Boundary detection is mainly used to detect the outline or shape of the object, so we can easily identify objects based upon the outline or shape. Segmentation is the process in which an image is divided into its constitutent objects or parts. The main goal of segmentation is to simplify and/or change of an image representation into something is an initial step before performing high-level tasks such as object recognition and understanding. Image segmentation is typically used to locate objects and boundaries in images. In medical imaging,segmentation is important for feature extraction, image measurements, and image display. In some applications it may be useful to extract boundaries of objects of interest from ultrasound images[1],[2], microscopic images[3]-[5]. In recent years,there have been several new methods to solve the problem of boundary detection, e.g.,

active contour model(ACM), geodestic active contour(GAC) model, active contours without edges(ACWE), gradient vector flow(GVF) snake model, etc. the snake models have become popular especially in boundary detection where the problem is more challenging due to the poor quality of the images. To overcome from this problem, we proposed a new technique for boundary detection for ill-defined edges in noisy images using a novel edge following. The proposed edge following technique is based on the vector image model and the edge map. The vector image model provides a more complete description of an image by considering both directions and magnitudes of image edges. The proposed edge vector field is generated by averaging magnitudes and directions in the vector image. The edge map is derived from Laws texture feature and the Canny edge detection. The vector image model and the edge map are applied to select the best edges.

II.

PROPOSED SYSTEM In proposed boundary detection algorithm is used to detect the boundary of object in an image. Boundary extraction algorithm consists of following three phases. 1. 2. 3. Edge vector gradient Edge mapping model Edge detection technique

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue5- May 2013
III. BLOCK DIAGRAM derived from the edge vector field may distribute randomly in magnitude and direction. Therefore, we extend the capability of the previous edge vector field by applying a local averaging operation where the value of each vector is replaced by the average of all the values in the local neighborhood, i.e., M(i, j) = D(i, j) =
Boundary detected Initial position Edge following technique

Input image

Average edge vector field

Edge map

.(8) ).(9)

A. Average edge vector field model We exploit the edge vector field to devise a new boundary extraction algorithm[29]. Give an image f(x,y), the edge vector field is calculated according to the following equations: (i, j) = (Mx(i, j) + My(i, j) )....(1) (i, j) ( ).(2) .(3)

Where Mr is the total number of pixels in the neighborhood N. We apply a 33 window as the neighborhood N throughout our research. B. Edge Map Edge map is edges of objects in an image derived from Laws texture and Canny edge detection. Laws Texture: The texture feature images of Laws texture are computed by convolving an input image with each of the masks. Given a column vector L=(1, 4, 6, 4, 1)T, the 2-D mask l(i, j) used for texture discrimination in this research is generated by LLT . The output image is obtained by convolving input image with texture mask. 2) Canny Edge detection: The canny approach to edge detection is optimal for step edges corrupted by white Gaussian noise. This edge detector is assumed to be the output of a filter that reduces the noise and locates the edges. There are four steps to detect edges, the first step is to convolve the output image obtained from the aforementioned Laws texture t(i, j) with a Gaussian filter. The second step is to calculate the magnitude and direction of the gradient. The third step is nonmaximal suppression to identify edges. The last step is the thresholding algorithm to detect and link edges. The double threshold algorithm is used to detect and link edges. Edge map shows some important information of edge. This idea is exploited for extracting objects boundaries in unclear images. Examples of the edge maps are shown in fig.2. 1)

K= (

Fig.1. (a) original unclear image.(b) result from the edge vector field and zoomed-in image.(c) result from the proposed average edge vector field and zoomed-in image.

Each component is the convolution between the image and the corresponding difference mask, i.e., Mx (i, j) = Gy f(x, y) My (i, j) = Gx f(x, y) ...............(4) (5)

Where Gx and Gy are the difference masks of the Gaussian weighted image moment vector operator in the x and y directions, respectively,[29] Gx (x, y) = Gy (x, y) =

)exp( ) (

)(6) ).(7)

Edge vectors of an image indicate the magnitudes and directions of edges which form a vector stream flowing around an object. However, in an unclear image, the vectors

Fig.2.(a) Synthetic noisy image.(b) Left ventricle in the MR image. (c) Prostate ultrasound image. (d)-(f) Corresponding edge maps derived from Laws texture and canny edge detection.

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue5- May 2013
= C. Edge Following Technique The edge following technique is performed to find the boundary of an object. Most edge following algorithms take into account the magnitude as primary information for edge following. However, the edge magnitude information is not efficient enough for searching the correct boundary of objects in noisy images because it can be very weak in some contour areas. .(14)

Fig.3. Edge masks used for detecting of image edges(normal direction constraint)

The magnitude and direction of the average edge vector field give information of the boundary which flows around an object. In addition, the edge map gives information of edge which may be a part of object boundary. Hence, both average edge vector filed and edge map are exploited in the decision of the edge following technique. At the position (i, j) of an image, the successive positions of the edges are then calculated by a 33 matrix. Lij(r, c) = Mij(r, c)+ Dij(r, c)+Eij(r,c) 0 r 2, 0 c 2.(10) Where , and are the weight parameters that control the edge to flow around an object. The larger value of an element in Lij indicates the stronger edge in the corresponding direction. The 33 matrices Mij, Dij and Eij are calculated as follows: Mij (r, c) = Dij (r, c) = 1|

Where k=1, 2,.,8 denoted the eight directions as indicated by the arrows at the center of the masks shown in fig.3. The edge following is started from the initial position to end position. D. Initial position In this section, we present a technique for determining a good initial position of edge following that can be used for the boundary detection. The initial position problem is very important in the classical contour models. Snake models can converge to a wrong boundary if the initial position is not close enough to the desired boundary. Finding the initial position of the classical contour models is still difficult and time consuming[32], [33]. In this proposed technique,the initial position of edge following is determined by the following steps. The first step is to calculate the average magnitude [M(i, j)] using (8). the second step is to calculate the density of edge length for each pixel from an edge map. An edge map [E(i, j)], as a binary image, is obtained by Laws texture and Canny edge detection. The idea of using density is to obtain measurement of the edge length. The density of edge length [L(i, j)] in each pixel can be calculated from L(i, j) = .........................(15)

Where C(i,j) is the number of connected pixels at each position of pixel. An example of counting the number of connected pixels is shown in fig.4(a) and (b). The density of edge length from the example is shown in fig.4(c). The third step is to calculate the initial position map P(i, j) from summation of average magnitude and density of edge length, i.e., P(i, j) = .(16) The last step is the thresholding of the initial position map. We have to threshold the map in order to detect the initial position of edge following. If P(i,j)>Tmax, then P(i, j) is the initial position of egde following. We obtained the initial position by setting Tmax to 95% of the maximum value. The initial positions from our method are positions that are close to the edges of interested areas.

.(11)
|

(12)

Eij (r, c) = E(i + r 1, j + c 1), 0 r 2, 0 c 2.. (13) Where M(i, j) and D(i, j) are the proposed average magnitude and direction of edge vector fields as shown in (8) and (9). E(i, j) is the edge map from Laws texture and canny edge detection. It should be noted that the value of each element in the matrices Mij, Dij and Eij are Ranged between 0 and 1. The direction can be calculated by

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue5- May 2013

Fig.5. (a)Aorta in cardiovascular MR image. (b) Averaged magnitude [M(i, j)]. (c) Density of length edge [L(i, j)]. (d) Initial position map [P(i, j)] and initial position of edge following derived by thresholding T max=0.95. Fig3. Magnitude of the image.

An example of the initial position derived from our method is shown in fig.5 to illustrate that method can be applied to illdefined edges in medical images. We can see that any one of the white circle points in the initial position map is a good candidate to be the initial position for our edge following technique. However, the maximum value of the white circle points is used in this research. After determining the suitable initial position, the proposed technique will follow edges along the object boundary until the closed loop contour is achieved. This causes a limitation of the technique, i.e., the boundary must be closed loop. IV. RESULTS

Fig4. Direction of the image.

Fig5.Laws texture output image.

Fig1. Original image.

Fig6.Canny magnitude of the image.

Fig2.Preprocessed image.

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue5- May 2013

Fig7. Canny direction of the image. Fig11.Density of the image.

Fig8.Non maxmimal suppression image. Fig12.Position image.

Fig9. First thresholding image.

Fig13.Boundary detected.

Fig10. Edge map of the image.

V. CONCLUSION We have designed a new edge following technique for boundary detection and applied it to object segmentation problem in medical images. Our edge following technique incorporates a vector image model and the edge map information. The results of detecting the object boundaries in noisy images show that the proposed technique is much better than the five contour models. We have successfully applied the edge following technique to detect ill-defined object boundaries in medical images. The proposed method can be applied not only for medical imaging, but can also be applied

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue5- May 2013
to any image processing problems in which ill-defined edge detection is encountered. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We sincerely thank our college, KLS VDRIT college for humble facilities and necessary infrastructure made available during the course of our work. We wish to express our thanks and sincere gratitude to our Principal, Head of the Department and guide for their guidance to complete this work successfully and enthusiastic encouragement. REFERENCES
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