Abstract
Multi-level thresholding for mammogram image segmentation leads to much better sub-sections of the intensity span, and hence very useful in breast cancer detection. In order to segment the mammogram image efficiently, in this paper, three popular nature inspired algorithms namely Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA), Electro-magnetism Optimization (EMO) and McCulloch’s Algorithm inspired Cuckoo Search Optimization algorithm (MACSO) are studied in detail; and are employed for desired cost function maximization for two well-known multi-level thresholding methods like Otsu and Kapur efficiently. The proposed approach is applied to all the 322 test images of database presented by Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS), to detect pectoral muscle, breast and suspicious mass efficiently. Performance of EMO, MACSO and HSA were analysed using measures like best fitness, MSE, PSNR, SSIM and TIME. From the experimental results, it is concluded that MACSO with Otsu was found to be robust for segmentation of mammogram images accurately.
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Highlights
• Nature inspired algorithms along with multilevel thresholding is used to segment the mammogram images.
• EMO, HSA, and MACSO are employed here for desired multi-level thresholding.
• Otsu and Kapur’s entropy were used to perform the multilevel thresholding.
• Various methods were compared using different evaluation matrices.
• MACSO with Otsu objective function gives best result among the used methods.
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Santhos, K.A., Kumar, A., Bajaj, V. et al. McCulloch’s algorithm inspired cuckoo search optimizer based mammographic image segmentation. Multimed Tools Appl 79, 30453–30488 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09310-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-020-09310-w