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Classification of tumors and it stages in brain MRI using support vector

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Conference Paper · February 2017

DOI: 10.1109/ECACE.2017.7912909

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International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Communication Engineering (ECCE), February 16-18, 2017, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh
Classification of Tumors and It Stages in Brain MRI
Using Support Vector Machine and Artificial Neural
Network
Rasel Ahmmed1, Anirban Sen Swakshar2, Md. Foisal Hossain3, and Md. Abdur Rafiq4
1,3
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering and 2,4Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
1
East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh and 2,3,4Khulna University of Engineering & Technology Khulna, Bangladesh
rsa@ewubd.edu, swaksharsen@yahoo.com, foisalkuet@yahoo.com and mdabdurrafiq2003@yahoo.com
Abstract— Cell is the smallest unit of tissues, whose abnormal
growth causes tumor in Brain. Support Vector Machine (SVM)
and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based tumor and its stages
classification in brain MRI images is presented in this research
work. This work is started with the enhancement of the brain
MRI images which are obtained from oncology department of
University of Maryland Medical Center. The integration of
Temper based K-means and modified Fuzzy C-means (TKFCM)
clustering algorithm used to segment the MRI images based on
gray level intensity in small portion of brain image. The values of
K in Temper based K-means algorithm more than the
conventional K-means again, automatically updated membership
of FCM eradicates the contouring problem of detecting the
tumor region. Then, from the segmented images the first order
statistic and region property based features are extracted. The
first kind of features is used to detect and isolate tumor from
normal brain MRI images with SVM. There is second kind which
is used to classify the tumors into benign and four malignant
stages tumor with ANN. The accuracy of classifying normal and
tumor brain this proposed method is up to 97.37% with Bit
Error Rate (BER) of 0.0294 which is better than other methods.
Keywords-Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); template based
k-means and modified fuzzy c-means clustering (TKFCM); support
vector machines; artificial neural network; feature extraction
I. INTRODUCTION
A brain tumor or intracranial neoplasm occurs when
abnormal cells form within the brain. There are several ways
to diagnose brain tumors, for example use MRI images. In
MRI technique, brain is imaged on the basis of density of
water in soft tissue which is higher compared to other tissues
such as bone [1]. Through the MRI images, the radiologist can
see the brain anatomy without performing surgery. However,
this process is still done manually and could lead to
misdiagnose. In addition, the different complex characteristics
of brain tumor make diagnosis more difficult [2]. Therefore,
system of Computer Aided Diagnostic (CAD) is indispensable
that will help radiologist in identifying and classifying brain
tumors.
In Medical diagnosis, through Magnetic Resonance
Images, robustness and accuracy of the prediction
algorithms are very important, because the result is crucial
for treatment of Patients. The statistical test data for the brain
MRI image is used for the classification of any brain tumor
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229
categories the region growing algorithm introduced in [3].
The results are acquired based on some predefined criteria i.e.
intensity information and/or edges, the connected region of an
image is extracted. The primary limitation of this method is
that its seed points are found through manual interaction. The
principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm with K-means
discussed in [4] is to defining the tumor class based on some
correlated pixel of the MRI image. The increase number of
feature and sample causes time consumption and inaccuracy in
results [5]. The classification with K-means clustering which
is announced for CT-Liver image along with experimental
application in Brain MRI explained that proper segmentation
can be possible with exact thresholding [6]. Again the K-value
does not exceed greater than 3 if there is any gray level
intensity more than that. Deng et al in [7] has presented a
masking algorithm for the classification with the aid of any
classifier algorithm. It is effective in finding automatic seed
point and neighbors but the dimension of mask is to change
manually for different brain MRI images [7]. The Fuzzy C-
means algorithm is introduced in [8]-[10] has accomplished
segmentation, and then introduces an expert system with
defined membership and clustered centroid to locate a
landmark tissue by matching them with a prior model. FCM of
Kannana et al [8] has limitation of noise sensitivity and
imperfection to the abnormality of brain e.g. tumor, edema,
and cyst. The most used technique for classification of brain
MRI image is Artificial Neural Network (ANN). An ANN
techniques offered by Lugina et al [11] has shown good results
with large data with the changing of some characteristics
parameter for training and test of the network. This process
requires a perfect pixel classifier, training data and huge time
to proceed which cause a vulnerable conditions for the critical
patients.
From the above discussion, it can be said that, there is no
such technique which is perfect. But to get optimum results in
this field we have to minimize the limitation of the individual
methods describes here.
A new incorporation of SVM and ANN for tumor
classification is introduced in this research. Brain MRI images
with normal and abnormal behavior is firstly enhanced
through some filter and preprocessing steps. Therefore, for the
detection and classification of the tumor in the brain there be
incorporated segmentation processes namely temper based K-
means and modified Fuzzy C-means (TKFCM) clustering
algorithm [12] is used. In this techniques the K-values varies
from 1 to 8 which was limited to only 1 to 3 in conventional
K-means and the automatically updated membership function
eradicates limitation of FCM. Then, two kinds of features are
extracted from these segmented images between these one
kind is used to detect the tumor with SVM as it is easy to
classify two kinds and other is used to classify tumor with
ANN into five categories along with four malignant stages.
This paper is organized as follows. In section II
methodology is described step by step .The results and
discussion is shown throughout in section III and finally the
whole work is concluded in section IV.
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Image data collection
Image data of brain MRI is taken from internet public
repository. The image of normal brain and tumor brain with
Lower Grade Glioma or Glioblastoma Multiforme is collected
from [13]-[15]. The number of the used data for each MRI
image for classification of normal and tumor brain through
SVM is of 39 images. There are 37 images for the
classification of benign and malignant tumor stages.
B. Image processing
The transform the MRI brain image to make it more
suitable for the next process is concerned through some steps
which are like following steps.
1) The conversion of Image to JPG and Image
Orientation Setting: The image is converted from
.mha format and .dicom format into .jpg by using
MATLAB conversion Tools application. After the
conversion, the size and direction resetting is
conducted in order to have the same size and
direction. The process is done manually by using
Photoshop CS5 application with 256 × 256 pixels.
2) Image Enhancement: The obtained images firstly are
converted to L*a*b* image for better view and
quality. That is why the values of luminosity can
span a range from 0 to 100 which should be scaled to
[0 1] range (appropriate for MATLAB(R) intensity
images of class double) before applying the three
contrast enhancement techniques like adjusted,
adaptive thresholded, and histogram imaging using
both weiner2 and median2 filter.
C. TKFCM based segmentation:
In this segmentation process K-means algorithm is used to
segment MRI images on the basis of gray level. This gray
level is selected depending on the temper of the image. Then
the modified Fuzzy c-means algorithm which depends on the
updated membership is applied to segment the temper based
K-means segmented image. The membership of modified
Fuzzy c-means is updated with the cluster distances from
centroid defining by the features of the tumor MRI image.
The TKFCM algorithm [12] is integration of the K-means
and Fuzzy c-means with some modification. The temper is
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230
added along with the conventional K-means, which is
identified by the temper or gray level intensity in the brain
image. Besides, the Fuzzy c-means membership and Euclidian
distance is modified by the image features.
Here, the coarse image B ( xi , y j ) which is marked in
describing desired temper for the K-means could be found
through convolution of gray level based temper and image
shown in below equation (1):
M +n N +n
B §¨ x i , y j ·¸ = ¦ ¦ P ( x i , y j ) ⊕ T M N ( r esize ) (1)
© ¹ i = n +1 j = n +1
Temper based window is selected by TMN which is given
as:
M −n N −n
TMN = ¦ ¦
i = n +1 j = n +1
P ( xi , y j ) (2)
In the equation (2), there is an temper based image matrix
with number of gray level intensity, G and number of bins,
S which is used to detect the temper of the image P ( xi , y j ) .
Where the n is defined as n = ( winsize − 1) / 2 . With exact
value of the temper, row and column, the desired temper is
obtained.
Separately Temper based K-means and modified Fuzzy c-
means clustering algorithm for segmentation can be written in
equation as below:
C K
J k = ¦¦ B( xi , y j ) || xi − c j ||2 (3)
i =1 j =1
N K
J m = ¦¦ (U ij ) m (dij ) 2 (4)
j =1 i =1
Then, from the equation (3) and (4) the contour through
which the exact location of and tumor portion in any image
can be find is
J km = v³ ( J k , J m ) (5)
c
Where, M and N are the row and column of B( xi , y j ) a
binary coarse image matrix. The centroid of the cluster,
number of data points in clusters and number of cluster is
defined by N , C and K respectively. In the equation (5)
which shows a contour integral of Temper based K-means
image and updated membership based FCM image, where c is
the contour value. The last portion of equation (5) is defined
as modified Fuzzy C-means whose Euclidian distance is
depended on the image features and the first portion is used as
the conventional K-means algorithm, which is defined by the
distance from each point to cluster center. the
D. Feature Extraction:
The system will extract the first and second order statistic.
The first order statistic feature is used to detect exact tumor
and it position in the brain MRI image and second order
region based statistic feature is required for distinguishing the
malignant tumor and benign tumor. Those are the parameters
that will be taken as first order; contrast, correlation, entropy,
energy and Homogeneity. The region properties of the
segmented MRI image provide area, eccentricity, and
perimeter. These values are used as the input of the Fuzzy
Inference System (FIS) and provide desired defuzzified value
for classification.
E. Support Vector Machine
The key concept of SVM is the use of hyper planes to
define decision boundaries separating between data points of
different classes. SVMs are to handle simple, linear,
classification tasks, as well as more complex i.e. nonlinear,
classification problems. Both separable and nonseparable
problems are handled by SVMs in the linear and nonlinear
case. In this research there are two classified data of normal
and abnormal (Tumor) brain images. The hyper planes for
SVMs is used to separate these classified data as normal data
and tumor data
F. Artificial Neural Network Backpropagation
Artificial Neural Network Backpropagation is one of
artificial neural networks with supervised learning [11]. This
ANN uses propagation algorithm to reduce the error value.
The error value is beneficial for setting the weights of each
neuron in backward propagation process; started from the
output layer to the input layer. The purpose of this setting is to
make the ANN to be able to recognize and adjust the resolving
problem. After attaining the information from MRI tumor
brain, the next process is the classification process which uses
ANN-BP. The input towards the ANN is the information of
feature extraction; the first and second order statistic. Then,
the ANN will generate the output in terms of classification
result on MRI brain image which has been categorized as
malignant or benign tumors.
The whole method is described by the following flow
chart.
Fig. 1. The flowchart of proposed algorithm
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III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
For Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), it is quite
difficult to classify the tumor since, MRI image rarely color
image. MRI imaging technique has good contrast value over
different technique and gold accepted technique of imaging.
The image of normal brain and tumor brain is collected from
[13]-[15]. The number of the used data for each MRI image of
normal brain, malignant tumor, and benign tumor is obtained
from 39 images.
The preprocessing steps include filtration, increase of
luminosity and adjust of contrast. Then the images are goes
through the TKFCM based segmentation process which can be
shown in Fig 2. The figure describes that the input image
firstly processed and segmented through TK-segmentation and
modified FCM. Finally the extracted tumors are acquired
which is used to determine the region property based statistical
features.
From the segmented image, the two kinds of features are
extracted one is statistical features and other is region property
based features. The first kind of statistical features i.e.
contrast, correlation, entropy, homogeneity, energy are used to
classify whether there is any normal brain or tumorous brain
using SVM. In this method the two kinds of data of normal
and abnormal brain are presented for the classification shown
in Fig.3(c). There are 46 images are used between them, the
classified tumor images are 37, normal brain images are 8 and
1 misclassified. The accuracy of this SVM method is 97.44%.
The other kind region property based features i.e. area,
eccentricity, perimeter, orientation are used to differentiate the
tumor and different malignant stages of I to IV. Our features
are used to present input vector and five output vectors which
represent benign, malignant stages I-IV for the training. There
is accuracy of 97.3% which is shown in Fig.3(d) in the
confusion matrix. This describes that there are 9 benign, 17
malignant I, 6 malignant II, 3 malignant II, and 1 malignant IV
stage tumor brain MRI images.
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 2. (a) Input images for TKFCM, (b) Detected brain tumor images
using TKFCM, and (c) Extracted tumor through TKFCM
 The network by which the performance of this technique is to measure through Neural Network is shown below Fig.3(a). The
network consists of 4 input vector layers, one hidden layer with 17 neurons, and 5 output vector layers. Usually the network is
consists of three layers like input layer, hidden layer, and output layer.
The performance curve shown in Fig.3(b) of the trained data, for number of iterations 60, increment number 0.05,
performance goal or minimum error 0.5e-02, minimum gradient 1e-10, and maximum validation check failure 6. The performance
goal is achieved between 8 and 9 iterations. Best validation performance is 0.17479 at iteration 2. The test data meets along with
validation at its best values.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Fig. 3. (a) The network architecture for the proposed method, (b) The performance curves for the proposed method, (c) The classified normal and tumor brain
data in 2D plot for SVM classifier and (d) The confusion matrix for benign and malignant stages I-IV using ANN classifier.

TABLE I. COMPARISON AMONG PROPOSED ALGORITHM AND CONVENTIONAL METHOD

Algorithms Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Accuracy (%) BER Computational time
Thresholding 85 80 81.3 0.175 ~3 min
Region Growing 88.46 75 86.47 0.182 ~6 min
ANN 95.42 100 95.07 0.022 ~8 min
FCM 86.95 85.7 86.4 0.136 ~5 min
SVM 96.2 66.67 90.44 0.0234 ~4 min
K-means 75 92.85 83.7 0.160 ~160-170 sec
TKFCM [12] 88.9 100 91.89 0.055 ~100 sec
Proposed SVM+ANN 98 100 97.37 0.0294 ~ 2 min
Method
a.
Image size=256x256, Software=MATLAB2014a, Processor= Core2duo, RAM=2GB,
windows=7

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 There is some error rate on the basis of identifying or not identifying any abnormal tissue in all brain tumor MRI image. This
can be calculated depending on the value of true positive, false positive, true negative, and false negative [17].The performance
parameters can be calculated for the 37 brain tumor images through following
TP
Sensitivity = × 100 (6)
(TP + FN )
TN
Specificity = ×100 (7)
(TN + FP )
(TP + TN )
Accuracy = ×100 (8)
(TP + TN + FN + FP )
1 § ( FN ) ( FP ) ·
BER = ¨¨ + ¸¸ (9)
2 © (TP + FN ) ( FP + TN ) ¹
Where, TP=True Positive, TN=True Negative, FP= False Positive, FN= False Negative
In TABLE I, a comparison chart is prepared among conventional brain tumor classification process and proposed method. The
performance analysis is comprehended through True Positive (TP), True Negative (TN), False Positive (FP), and False Negative
(FN). In this proposed technique, there are 37 brain tumor images are taken and from the equation (6), (7), (8) and (9) the
sensitivity of 98%, 100% specificity, accuracy of 97.37%, and BER 0.0294, which are obtained by combining ANN and SVM.
The results show that the proposed method is better than the conventional methods like thresholding, region growing, SVM,
ANN, FCM, TKFCM and K-means. Though the conventional ANN comprehends the value of accuracy of 95.07%, but the
computational time is so high. But the proposed technique shows less computational time with better accuracy than conventional
ANN. So, it can be useful for both detecting tumor and classifying tumor stages of brain MRI images for experts.

Classification of Brain MRI”, International Journal on Information

IV. CONCLUSION
The abnormality of the tissues is needed to be identified or
classified for the betterment of the human body. In this paper,
the incorporated SVM and ANN based classification
technique is proposed. The processed brain MRI images are
firstly segmented using TKFCM algorithm. In which the k
value and updated membership are different from
conventional process. There are two kind of features have
been extracted from segmented images for the purpose of
isolating and classifying tumor. The first kind of statistical
features are used for the classifying normal and abnormal
brain MRI image using SVM. The tumor categories and
malignant tumor stages are classified through ANN back
propagation algorithm. The results show that this method is
better than others like region growing, thresholding, and FCM
in point of every parameter of comparison. But in point of
accuracy and computational time the proposed method is
better than ANN, SVM, and TKFCM also.
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