Kernelized Weighted SUSAN based Fuzzy C-Means Clustering for Noisy Image Segmentation

-- The paper proposes a novel Kernelized image segmentation scheme for noisy images that utilizes the concept of Smallest Univalue Segment Assimilating Nucleus (SUSAN) and incorporates spatial constrai nts by computing circular colour map induced weights. Fuzzy damping coefficients are obtained for each nucleus or center pixel on the basis of the corresponding weighted SUSAN area values, the weights being equal to the inverse of the number of horizontal and vertical moves required to reach a neighborhood pixel from the center pixel. These weights are used to vary the contributions of the different nuclei in the Kernel based framework. The paper also presents an edge quality metric obtained by fuzzy decisi on based edge candidate selection and final computation of the blurriness of the edges after their selection. The inability of existing algorithms to preserve edge information and structural details in their segmented maps necessitates the computation of t he edge quality factor (EQF) for all the competing algorithms. Qualitative and quantitative analysis have been rendered with respect to state - of - the - art algorithms and for images ridden with varying types of noises. Speckle noise ridden SAR images and Rici an noise ridden Magnetic Resonance Images have also been considered for evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in extracting important segmentation information. Image segmentation [1] constitutes an important part of image processing which has various applications in the fields of feature extraction and object recognition. The goal of image segmentation methods is to cluster t he pixels of an image into salient regions and hence these methods mainly involve various clustering techniques [2 - 6].