ALGORITHMS FOR
VISUALIZATION
A Bayes-Based
Region-Growing Algorithm
for Medical Image Segmentation
A new Bayesian-analysis-based region-growing algorithm for medical image segmentation
can robustly and effectively segment medical images. Specifically, the approach studies
homogeneity criterion parameters in a local neighbor region. Using the multislices
Gaussian and anisotropic filters as a preprocess helps reduce an image’s noise.
M
edical images from computerized
tomography (CT), magnetic reso-
nance imaging (MRI), and other
imaging modalities are playing in-
creasingly important roles in clinics. Accordingly,
analyzing these images for computer-aided diag-
nosis and therapy planning is becoming a more
challenging research task.
Region growing is the most conventional and ef-
ficient approach in medical image segmentation,
which is the preliminary stage of image analysis.
(See the “Related Work in Medical Image
Segmentation” sidebar on p. 34 for details on other
approaches.) The key step in region-growing
methods is to define a classifying criterion that re-
lies on image properties and user interaction.
Bayesian analysis is a powerful tool for pattern clas-
sification, so we propose a Bayes-based region-
growing algorithm that estimates parameters by
studying characteristics in local regions and con-
structing the Bayes factor as a classifying criterion.
Our method uses a Gaussian mixture model to de-
scribe the local regions’ homogeneity and image
1521-9615/07/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
Copublished by the IEEE CS and the AIP
ZHIGENG PAN AND JIANFENG LU
Hangzhou Dianzi University
32 THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN PEER-REVIEWED.
shape properties. We get the parameters by ana-
lyzing statistical information via a specific cluster
algorithm. To reduce image noise, we use the
anisotropic and multislices Gaussian filters. Finally,
we apply the morphological closing operation as a
postprocess to remove holes in the result images.
By applying a Bayes-based statistical methodol-
ogy to adjust parameters during the region-searching
process and by using multi-image-processing meth-
ods, we can improve the final image quality. We
tested our algorithm framework on CT and MRI
image segmentation, and our experimental results
show that the approach is reliable and efficient.
Bayes-Based
Region-Growing Algorithm
Medical volume data sets are made up of a series of
parallel slices with uniform spacing; the space be-
tween the nearby slices is small, so the image data
in adjacent slices are highly correlated. As Regina
Pohle pointed out, values in CT images represent
average x-ray absorption distorted by noise and ar-
tifacts.1 The absorption itself is a constant value for
a given anatomical structure, and the noise can be
assumed to be zero-mean Gaussian noise with an
unknown standard deviation based on the image-
formation process.
In the first step of our algorithm, we use mul-
tislices and anisotropic filtering to remove the
noise in medical images. Figure 1 illustrates the
COMPUTING IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING
Gauss convolution filtering between multislices,
and Figure 2 gives experimental results, with
Figure 2c showing that we effectively eliminated
the noise from Figure 2b by using Gauss convo-
lution filtering.

Anisotropic Filtering
Pietro Perona and Jitendra Malik2 formulated
anisotropic filtering as a diffusion process. The
equation is
It(x, y, t) =   C(|I(x, y, t)|) I(x, y, t),
Figure 1. Gauss convolution filtering between multislices. We
combine every nearby slice into the last result according to the left
curve. The noise can be depressed by the nearby reference points.
(1)

where I(x, y, t) is the input image’s intensity value,

and t refers to the iteration steps. C(|I(x, y, t)|) is
the diffusion function and is a monotonically de-
creasing function of the image gradient magnitude.
This is how the diffusion process will primarily oc-
cur in the regions’ interior (because of the low gra-
dient magnitude); it won’t affect region boundaries
where the gradient magnitude is large. Here, we
choose a Gauss function as function C: (a) (b) (c)

|∇I|2 Figure 2. Experimental results of using Gauss convolution filtering.

C (| ∇I |) =
2
e 2K . (2) Note the progression from (a) the original image to (b) the image
with Gauss noise to (c) the image after Gauss convolution filtering.
Parameter K controls the diffusion process and
adaptive changes with the gradient magnitude

⎛ 1 n n ⎞
K = C ⋅ sqrt ⎜ 2
⎜⎝ n
∑ ∑ |∇I ( x, y, t )|2⎟⎟ , (3)
y =1 x =1 ⎠

where n is the neighborhood’s size. Normally, we

adopt n = 3.
Figure 3 illustrates our experimental results with
anisotropic filtering.

Local Gaussian Mixture Model

A connected region forms during the region-grow- (a) (b)
ing process as we calculate each neighboring pixel
with the homogeneity criterion. Generally, this cri- Figure 3. Experimental results of using anisotropic filtering. We took
terion remains unchanged throughout the process. (a) the original image distorted with mostly random noises, and
Our algorithm calculates the homogeneous parame- achieved (b) this result after the anisotropic filtering operation.
ters by analyzing the histogram’s shape in neighbor-
hood areas. Generally speaking, we can define
homogeneity as a likelihood of belonging to a Gauss- ian approach to model selection is based on poste-
ian distribution of gray values with a given mean and rior model probabilities. Considering a set of
standard deviation. The mean is the absorption value classes, {1, 2, …, N}, and data x, the posterior
of the tissue in a CT image and the magnetization in probability of class i is
an MRI, and the standard deviation is correlated to
the noise. Thus, the mean and standard deviation p( x |ω i ) P (ω i )
help us distinguish different tissues. P (ω i | x ) = N
, (4)
We use a Bayes factor to label pixels to different ∑ p( x |ω j )P (ω j )
classes in the region-growing process. The Bayes- j =1

JULY/AUGUST 2007 33
 RELATED WORK
IN MEDICAL IMAGE SEGMENTATION
Rolf Adams broadly classifies segmentation techniques into
four classes:1 interactive thresholding,2,3 boundary detec-
tion,4,5 region splitting and merging,6,7 and hybrid
methods.8 Thresholding techniques compare the value of all
pixels with a threshold value and identify the values of pixels
that lie within a particular region’s range. Selecting the
threshold value is the key to this method. Boundary-based
methods use edge-detect techniques such as a gradient filter
to locate different regions’ boundaries, but this method is
sensitive to image noise.
Region-based segmentation techniques postulate that
pixels in the same region have similar features. The general
growing procedure starts from some initial points as seed
points, compares every pixel with its surrounding neighbors,
and if a certain merging criterion is satisfied, the pixel is clas-
sified into the same class. Naturally, the choice of a merging
criterion is critical to the segmentation’s success in this
method. Many researchers focus on this important issue to
improve the algorithm’s effectiveness and accuracy, so most
of their algorithms are sensitive to the start position and se-
quence of the initial seed points. As an alternative, Lin Zheng
has developed an unseeded region-growing algorithm for
image segmentation.9 Region-growing algorithms are spa-
tial-information-based segmentation methods. Other meth-
ods are called clustering-based techniques. k-means is a clas-
sical and powerful clustering algorithm that researchers still
apply to many applications.10–11
All these segmentation techniques have their advantages
and drawbacks, which encourages researchers to combine
one or more of them into hybrid methods. Malik Jitendra,
for example, used a spectral graph theoretic framework of
normalized cuts and combined intensity, texture, and con-
tour measurements in her algorithm.12 Susanta Mukhopad-
hyay’s algorithm applies multiscale morphological
segmentation techniques.13,14
We can also use anisotropic filtering techniques to effec-
tively reduce noise in the image process while still preserving
region boundaries and fine details. In 1990, Pietro Perona
proposed the Perona-Malik anisotropic diffusion method to
overcome the drawbacks of conventional linear filters such
as Gauss filters, which usually blur an image’s sharp bound-
aries and small structures.15 Perona also analyzed how the
different parameters in filter function affect image bound-
aries. Based on this technique, Guido Gerig developed multi-
channel anisotropic diffusion for smoothing in MRI brain
images.16 The major advantages of this method are efficient
noise reduction in homogeneous regions and edge en-
hancement and preservation of object contours/boundaries
between different regions. Used as a preprocess step,

70 70 where p(x| i ) is the function of likelihood of

60 60
class  I ; and P(i) is the prior probability of class
50 50
 i and is usually obtained from training data.
40 40
30 30 The quantity
20 20
p( x |ω i ) ⋅ P (ω i )
10 10 Bij = (5)
p( x |ω i ) ⋅ P (ω i )
0 50 100 150 200 0 50 100 150 200
(a) (b) (c)
is defined as the Bayes factor for class i against
70 35
class i.
60 30
As an example, consider the gray-level distribu-
50 25
40 20
tions of the abdomen image in Figure 4. In Figure
30 15 4a, the red region is inside the tissue, so the shape
20 10 of the gray histogram in Figure 4b should approx-
10 5 imately obey the Gaussian distribution. In Figure
4e, we can clearly see that the gray histogram is
0 50 100 150 200 0 50 100 150 200 made up of two Gaussian distributions because the
(d) (e) (f) red region is just on the boundaries of the two tis-
sues. To classify the pixels according to the Gauss-
Figure 4. Gaussian distribution of an abdomen image’s ian mixture model correctly, we first estimate the
homogeneity model. Note the changes from (a) the image with a Gaussian model’s parameters and then use the
selected area inside the tissue and (b) a histogram of that area; to Bayes factor as the selection rule. To do so, we use
(c) a Gaussian curve fitting for (b); to (d) the image with a selected the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to
area on the edge of the tissue and (e) a histogram of that area; to fit the parameters of the Gaussian mixture densi-
(f) a Gaussian curve fitting for (e). ties. Unfortunately, the iteration algorithm uses a

34 COMPUTING IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

 anisotropic filters can effectively eliminate noise in medical
image segmentation.17
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Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 16, no. 6, 1994, pp. 641–647.
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Techniques,” Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing, vol. 41,
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7. G.A. Borges and M.J. Aldon, “A Split-and-Merge Segmentation Algo-
rithm for Line Extraction in 2-D Range Images,” Proc. 15th Int’l Conf. Pat-
tern Recognition (ICPR 00), vol. 1, IEEE CS Press, 2000, pp. 441–444.
8. K. Haris et al., “Hybrid Image Segmentation Using Watersheds and Fast
Region Merging,” IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol. 7, no. 12, 1998, pp.
1684–1699.
9. L. Zheng, J. Jesse, and T. Hugues, “Unseeded Region Growing for 3D Im-
age Segmentation,” Proc. ACM Pan-Sydney Workshop Visualization, ACM
Press, vol. 2, 2000, pp. 31–37.
10. T. Kanungo et al., “An Efficient k-Means Clustering Algorithm: Analysis
and Implementation,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelli-
gence, vol. 24, no. 7, 2002, pp. 881–892.
11. L. Yingli, J. Tianzi, and Z. Yufeng, “A Split-Merge Based Region Growing
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no. 4, 2004, pp. 271–279.
12. M. Jitendra et al., “Contour and Texture Analysis for Image Segmenta-
tion,” Int’l J. Computer Vision, vol. 43, no. 1, 2001, pp. 7–27.
13. S. Mukhopadhyay and B. Chanda, “Multiscale Morphological Segmenta-
tion of Gray-Scale Images,” IEEE Trans. Image Processing, vol.12, no. 5,
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15. P. Perona and J. Malik, “Scale-Space and Edge Detection Using
Anisotropic Diffusion,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis Machine Intelligence,
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16. G. Gerig et al., “Nonlinear Anisotropic Filtering of MRI Data,” IEEE Trans.
Medical Imaging, vol. 11, no. 2, 1992, pp. 221–232.
17. J. Weickert, “Applications of Nonlinear Diffusion in Image Processing and
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no. 1, 2001, pp. 33–50.

lot of computing time, so to counteract this affec- model’s parameters.

tion, we use a fuzzy c-means algorithm to estimate
the parameters space. Then, we apply these para-
meters into the Bayes-factor-based region-grow-
ing process as parameters.
Fuzzy c-means (FCM)—first proposed by J.C.
Dunn3 and frequently used in pattern recogni-
tion—is a clustering method that lets one piece of
data belong to two or more clusters. The method
is based on minimizing the following objective
function:
N C 2 2. Use FCM to calculate the u, c, and the error
J m = ∑ ∑ uijm x i − c j , 1  m  ,
i =1 j =1
where m is any real number greater than 1, uij is the
degree of membership of xi in cluster j, xi is the ith
of d-dimensional measured data, cj is the cluster’s d-
dimension center, and ||*|| is any norm expressing
the similarity between any measured data and the
center. Medical image segmentation approaches of-
ten employ this clustering algorithm to distinguish
different tissues in the whole image data. Here, we
use it to estimate the local Gaussian distribution
In our algorithm, we want to find the suitable
functions u and the centroids c to minimize the
objective function (Equation 6). We can simplify
Equation 6 on the assumption that the two
classes cluster. This is acceptable in our segmen-
tation process, and it dramatically reduces com-
puting time.
The following pseudocode charts our algorithm:
1. First, assume iNumofClasses=1 represents
pixels inside the border.
(6) E(u, c).
3. If E > Eset, then set iNumofClasses=2 and go
to step 2.
4. Get the final parameters (u, c) as the result.
The parameter iNumofClass is the number of
classes during the clustering process, and function
E(u, c) represents the degree of errors.
Algorithm Framework Description
After obtaining the parameters, we can construct
the region-growing criterion:

JULY/AUGUST 2007 35

(a) (b)
Figure 5. Morphological operation experimental results. Some
obvious holes exist in (a) the original image, which we were able to
remove by using (b) the closing operator.
(a) (b) (c) (d)
Figure 6. Experimental results comparisons. We achieved the
results with parameter k threshold values of (a) 5, (b) 10, and (c)
30 in a conventional region-growing algorithm. However, (d) our
Bayes-based region-growing algorithm improves results by
automatically estimating the parameters.
⎧ ⎧⎪ Bij > 1, Pixel belongs to class i
⎪On the border ⎨
⎪ ⎪⎩ Bij < 1, Pixel belongs to class j
C grow =⎨
⎪ ⎧true, if μ − cσ < x < μ + cσ
⎪ Inside the border ⎨ false, otherwise,
⎩ ⎩
where the FCM computes  and  in the current
neighborhood, and C is the parameter factor. As we
described in the last section, we calculate the num-
ber of classes according to the local histogram’s
shape, and the parameter iNumofClasses repre-
sents whether the pixel is inside or on the border of
the region.
A C-like pseudocode of our algorithm is as
follows:
36
1. Do preprocess filtering.
2. Begin the loop of the region-growing process.
3. Estimate the parameter space using FCM al-
gorithm.
4. Construct the criterion for region growing.
5. Investigate nearby pixels to see if they meet
the criterion.
6. End loop.
In Step 3, we calculate the parameters of the
Gaussian mixture model. Then, we apply these pa-
rameters in Equation 7 to construct the region-
growing process’s homogeneity criterion.
Steps 4 and 5 give the Floodfill algorithm’s
loop cycle, which travels all the current region’s
neighbors and repeats until no more seeds meet
the criteria.
Morphological Operation
After the region-growing process, we have some
holes in the resulting images because of existing
noise. To fix this, we adopt a morphological oper-
ation to remove the holes by first using an erosion
operation and then applying a dilation operation.
We define the erosion operation in morphological
operators as
E(x) = XB = {x, y|Bxy  X}; (8)
the dilation operation is
D = X  B = {x, y|Bxy X = }. (9)
Figure 5 shows some experimental results.
Experimental Results
We implemented our algorithm on the Win2k and
VC++ 6.0 platforms. Figure 6 shows some experi-
mental results, using skull and liver medical data
sets. The images in the left three columns are the
results from a conventional region-growing algo-
rithm, and those on the right are the result of our
(7) Bayes-based region-growing algorithm. As Figure
6 illustrates, the conventional algorithm relies on
user interaction, forcing users to continuously ad-
just parameter k for better results. The algorithm
we proposed overcomes this drawback by auto-
matically estimating the parameters.
Table 1 compares the computational time taken
by the conventional algorithm and ours. Our al-
gorithm takes more time because it needs to com-
pute model parameters in the region-growing
process, but solutions such as reducing the size of
the local neighbor area can improve this bottle-
neck. In future research, we will focus on ap-
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 Table 1. Time comparison between conventional region-growing algorithm and our Bayes-based algorithm.

Data set Dimension Conventional region growing (seconds)* Our algorithm (seconds)†
k=5 k = 10 k = 30 s=5 s = 10
Skull A 256
256 0.2 0.3 0.5 3.1 4.0
Skull B 256
256 0.1 0.3 0.4 2.8 3.2
Liver 384
384 0.3 0.4 0.6 5.7 9.1

*Parameter k is the threshold value in the conventional region-growing algorithm

†
s is the size of the local neighbor area in the Bayes-based algorithm

proaches using graphic processing units (GPUs)

to speed up the algorithm.
Figure 7 compares the results of different seg-
mentation algorithms. The general region-grow-
ing algorithm’s results aren’t good because fixed
parameters limit the algorithm’s ability to process
growing regions. The split-and-merge algorithm
is a classical clustering method, so it only considers
the pixels’ global statistical information. Our algo-
rithm considers all the statistical and spatial infor-
mation, making the edge of segmented image exact
and smooth. (a) (b) (c) (d)
Figure 8 compares our algorithm’s computing
time for different image sizes with other segmenta- Figure 7. Experimental result comparisons. In comparing (a) the
tion algorithms. The four algorithms we compared original images (the red arrow points to the objects [teethridge
are region growing with k = 5, k = 30, a split-and- and auris] to be segmented), (b) segmentation results from
merge algorithm, and our method. Although the conventional region growing with parameters k = 30, (c) results
data size changes from 64
64 to 1,024
1,024, the from the powerful split-and-merge algorithm, and (d) results from
computing time for all the algorithms increases with our algorithm, we see that the edge of the images with our
different degrees. Conventional region growing algorithm are more exact and smooth.
gets the best performance because of its simplicity,
and the split-and-merge algorithm slows down be-
cause it must scan all the image pixels during the number NSFC 60533080, and the 973 Program of
process. Our algorithm’s computing time also in- China, under grant number 2003CB716104. We thank
creases, but in an acceptable range. Jim X. Chen for his kind suggestion to the improvement
Figure 9 shows some reconstruction experiments of this research work.
of 3D models using our algorithm; here, we used
Bayes-based region growing in each slice and then References
reconstructed the 3D models. 1. R. Pohle and K.D. Toennies, “Segmentation of Medical Images
Using Adaptive Region Growing,” Proc. SPIE Medical Imaging, M.
Sonka and K.M. Hanson, eds., vol. 4322, 2001, pp. 1337–1346.
2. P. Perona and J. Malik, “Scale-Space and Edge Detection Using

I
n the future, we plan to extend our algorithm
into 3D volume data sets in the multichan-
nel color space. With the rapid development
of PC hardware, programmable graphic
cards can help speed up graphic applications. One
of our future research directions is to use this tech-
nology to optimize our algorithm to enhance per-
formance and reduce user waiting time.
Acknowledgments
This research work is supported by the Key National
Natural Science Foundation in China, under grant
Anisotropic Diffusion,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis Machine Intel-
ligence, vol. 12, no. 7, 1990, pp. 629–639.
3. J.C. Dunn, “A Fuzzy Relative of the ISODATA Process and Its Use
in Detecting Compact Well-Separated Clusters,” J. Cybernetics,
vol. 3, no. 9, 1974, pp. 95–104.
Zhigeng Pan is a professor in, PhD supervisor for, and di-
rector of the Division of VR & Multimedia at the State Key
Lab of CAD&CG, Zhejiang University. He is also the vice
director of the Hangzhou Center, CAD Training Network
in China. His research interests are in computer graphics,
virtual reality, e-commerce, multimedia computing, and

JULY/AUGUST 2007 37
 50 40
k = 5 region growing 35
40 Split-and-merge 30
k = 30 region growing
30 25
Our algorithm
20
20 15
10
10
5
0 0
64 × 64 128 × 128 256 × 256 512 × 512 1024 × 1024 64 × 64 128 × 128 256 × 256 512 × 512 1024 × 1024

(a) (b)

Figure 8. Computing time comparisons. With different data sizes for (a) skull and (b) liver data sets, we see the different,
increasing time rates for all the segmentation methods.

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

Figure 9. Experiment results with 3D rendering for the (a) skull model, (b) rachis model, (c) tumor model in a blood
vessel, and (d) inner ear model. We use the reconstruction method to create and render the 3D objects as the succeeding
steps for segmentation operation to make the results more observable.

Web graphics. Pan has a PhD in computer science from
Zhejiang University. He is an associate editor of the In-
ternational Journal of CAD/CAM and is a member of
IS&T, the Multimedia Committee of Image & Graphics in
China, and the Committee of China Image and Graphics
Association. Contact him at zgpan@cad.zju.edu.cn.
Jianfeng Lu is a faculty member in the Department of
Computer Science in Hangzhou Dianzi University. His
research interests are in scientific visualization and
computer animation. Lu has a PhD in computer science
from Zhejiang University. Contact him at jflu@hziee.
edu.cn.

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