International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 9, September 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

Brain Tumor Segmentation from MRI Using GLCM

Shubhangi S. Veer (Handore) 1, Dr. Pradeep M. Patil 2
1
Research Scholar, Ph.D Student, JJTU, Rajasthan
2
Jt. Director, Trinity College of Engg. and Research, Pune, Maharashtra

Abstract
In this paper, an attempt has been made to summarize
the information about the human brain anatomy,
information about the brain tumor and cropping the exact
location of tumor. X-ray, MRI, Ultrasound etc. are
different techniques used to scanning brain tumor images.
Radiologist refers these images to get detail information
about tumor to analyze the diseases. Digital image
processing is one of the useful tools for preprocessing
images in medical area for getting more clear and exact
details in earlier stages. This is helpful to the physicians
and practitioner for diagnoses diseases.

brain. The Brain directs us to do the things and our body

does not think .The brain is in charge of our senses,
memory, emotions etc. A network of nerves carries
massages from the brain to the rest of our body and vice
versa. Eyes, ears, and other parts of the head are directly
connected to brain with the help of nerves. The brain and
other body parts are also connected with the help of nerves
passing through the spinal cord. [1]

Key word: Brain tumor, detection, segmentation,

Cropping.

1. INTRODUCTION
Imaging technology in Medicine helps doctor to
observe the interior portions of the human body for easy
diagnosis. Digital image processing is one of the tool by
which it easier to analyze medical images in short duration
which may helps the doctors for fast diagnosis. With the
help of digital image processing it is possible to detect,
identify and analysis of brain tumor can be done easily.
Brain tumor is the main cause of cancer death
worldwide. Brain tumor can affect people at any age.
Brain tumor is embedded in a brain, which result in
development of abnormalities. The earlier detection of
tumor is challenging task due to the structure of cells in
the brain as cells are in overlapped form. The detection of
brain tumor, its location and ability to spread quickly help
for proper treatment. By digital image processing
technique identification of diseases location is easier.
Digital image processing has an advantage like
reproducing original data again and again without any
change and enhance an image which helps the radiologist
for analysis.
Brain Anatomy:
The brain is one of the complex organs in the human
body. More than 100 billion nerves presents in human

Figure 1: Brain anatomy

The brain is made up of different specialized areas that
work
together,
that
are:
cortex: The outermost layer of brain cells is cortex. It is
responsible for reading, thinking, learning, speech and
emotions.
Brain stem: The spinal cord and the rest of the brain is
connected by means of brain stem. It controls the basic
functions like breathing, body temperature, blood pressure
sleep and other basic body function.
Basal ganglia: Basal ganglia are in the center of the brain.
It is a cluster of structures. It coordinates messages
between multiple other brain areas.
Cerebellum: Cerebellum is at the base and back of the
brain. The cerebellum is responsible for balancing
activities like walking, standing and coordination.
As shown in figure 1 the brain is subdivided into several
lobes like:
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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 9, September 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

1. The frontal lobe: This lobe is responsible for problem

solving and judgment and motor function.
2. The parietal lobe: This lobe manages sensation,
handwriting, and body position.
3. The temporal lobe: This is involved with memory and
hearing.
4. The occipital lobe: This lobe contains the brain's visual
processing system.
Basically there are two type of Brain tumor:
1. Primary tumor
2. Secondary tumor
1. Primary tumor: Primary brain tumors are originates in
the brain. This tumor can be cancerous or noncancerous.
The primary tumor has two subtypes:
Benign (noncancerous ):
Benign tumor is slow-growing. It does not spread to other
parts of the brain, spinal cord or other areas of the body.
It often has well-defined borders. This tumor can be
removed completely by surgery and there are fewer
chances to come back.
Melignant (cancerous):
This malignant type of tumor is fast-growing and affects
the healthy brain cells and may spread to other parts of the
brain or spinal cord.
Secondary brain tumor: Secondary brain tumor has
begun in another part of the body like breast cancer and
kidney cancer that spreads to the brain.
Diagnostic tools available for getting a information of
brain anatomy are CT scan, MRI , X-ray. MRI provides
detail information about abnormalities in soft tissues than
X-rays and CT scan.[2] The radiologist mostly prefers
MRI images for effective diagnosis and for the treatment
of the diseases.

2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Famer, Jain et. al.[2005] proposed an algorithm for
CT scan brain tumor images. Brain tumor arises because
of an abnormal growth of cells within the brain or the
central spinal canal. All kind of tumors inside the central
spinal canal are considered as brain tumors. This
uncontrollable growth of cells necessary to control in
earlier stage for the server of patient. The expert doctors
take decision in the radiology lab by observing the tumor
directly based on their experience. So author has
developed a system using digital image processing. The
author has used CT-scan images for the detection and the
correct area of the brain that is infected. The algorithm

designed by author is helpful for fast detection of tumor

region. [3]
T. Logeswari et.al. [2010] proposed an algorithm to detect
brain tumors is fully automatic algorithm. The analysis
has based on brain symmetry. Here they have segmented
an image, separate out the tumor region and measured
the area of tumor. The quantitative analysis of MRI brain
tumor is helpful for disease progression. In preliminary
phase, the modular and multi-step approaches are useful
for segmenting tumor in MRI. The author got good results
in complex situations. Tumor segmentation and area
calculation from MRI data has done in this paper at high
speed. [4]
Gopal, N.N.Karnan, at al. [2010] in medical imaging
system, segmentation of brain tumor magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI) has become an emergent research area. In
this paper author has proposed an algorithm for tumor
detection based on segmentation and morphological
operators. Firstly author enhanced the quality of scanned
image and then morphological operator applied to
enhanced image to get exact tumor region in MRI scanned
image.[5]
Neha Tirpude, R. R. Welekar [2013] presented a paper on
Brain MRI images segmentation. There are many
challenges in biomedical imaging & medical image
processing area due to complex structure of tissues in a
brain. By using engineering & technology, it is possible to
overcome these challenges. Image processing is the best
solution. In this paper author has segmented MRI images
of brain, for detection of tumor with the help of image
processing. In this paper author has also mentioned the
different techniques like thresholding, Region-growing,
Clustering etc. for image segmentation of brain MRI
images. [6]
Chandrakant Biradar, Shantkumari [2013] presented a
paper for brain tumor recognition. Here author has
proposed an algorithm that is fully automatic to detect
brain tumor. By using digital image processing techniques
an author has done tumor region detection from MRI
images. They have identified, segmented the tumor and
calculated area of the tumor. Classification has done on
the basis size, texture and shape of a tumor. For
classification of tumor they have used SVM classifier.
[7]
R. Rajeswari, G. Gunasekaran [2014] presented a paper
for detection of abnormal mass of tissue and segment
them from MRI images . Tumor is a cluster of cells
forming a lump or mass. In this paper author proposed a
watershed segmentation technique to segment the tumor
region from MRI image and hierarchical clustering
algorithm is also employed to cluster brain tumor. [8]
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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 9, September 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

MRI images provide detail information about

abnormalities in soft tissues that may not be identified by
X-rays and CT scan. So MRI images are mostly referred
by the radiologist for effective diagnosis and for the
treatment of the diseases.

cropping the tumor region. By cropping we extracted the

tumor region from MRI of brain tumor. After cropping of
tumor area, we have calculated the textural features of
tumor region and the area of tumor region in terms of
number of pixels.

Image Acquisition

Noise removal

Enhancement

Figure 2: Brain Tumor MRI image

Gray to Binary
conversion

3. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is used in this paper
for identification and detection of a brain tumor with the
help of digital image processing. These MRI gives details
about the brain structure.
Our aim is to extract the tumor region from the MRI.
Figure 3 shows the steps that we followed for tumor
segmentation and cropping of tumor region from MRI.
Here we have used MRI images. Preprocessing is the first
step in this algorithm. These images are converted into
gray scale images of size 256x256. The noise contained in
these MRI images is essential to remove to get a clear
image for further processing. Different kinds of filter are
available to remove noise signal. The selection of filter is
based on the type of noise in an image. Here we have used
median filter. Median filter gives a smooth image. After
smoothing an image enhancement is next step. By image
enhancement it is possible to get finer details, prominent
edges of an object in an image and it also increases the
sharpness of an image. Image enhancement has done by
applying power law transform. Then the enhanced image
is segmented to separate out tumor region from MRI
image .There are different segmentation techniques like
local and global. We have used global thresholding for
segmentation. For segmentation first we have plotted the
histogram of an image. The threshold point we have
calculated from T1 (min) and T2 (max) values from
histogram. This threshold value segment an image to
white matter from gray matter. Then the last step is

Segmentation
Segmentation
Tumor Detection

Edge Detection

Cropping tumor location

Measure textural
features of tumor region

Figure 3: Tumor detection steps

4.

RESULT

Figure 4 shows the result obtained by our algorithm.

The figure a shows original MRI s of brain tumor ,
b are the segmented images of MRI , c and d shows
actual tumor region in brain MRI. The e shows the
actual tumor region in MRI.

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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 9, September 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

a. Input MRI image

a. Input MRI image

b. Segmentation of a
a. Segmentation of a

b. Erosion of a

b. Erosion of a

c. Edges of tumor region

c. Edges of tumor region

d. Cropped tumor region

d. Cropped tumor region

Figure 4: Tumor regions is cropped from the original brain

MRI image

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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 9, September 2015, ISSN 2348 8050

From cropped tumor region of brain tumor MRI we have

calculated various textural parameters with the help of
GLCM technique. Table 1 shows the texture and area of
tumor region.
Table 1: Various parameters of Detected Tumor
Input
imag
e
MRI
1
MRI
2

Contra
st

Homogene
ity

Correlati
on

Energ
y

0.9526

0.9017

0.947

1.2532

0.9463

0.9455

0.377
7
0.435
3

Area
(in
Pixel)
956
328

Figure 5 shows the graphical presentation of various t

textural parameters which are calculated with the help of
GLCM technique by using brain MR images
Tumor images V/S GLCM parameters
1.
Contrast
Homogeneity

1.

Correlatio
Energy

1.

0.

0.

0.

0.

Figure 5:
images

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

Performance of proposed method on MR

5. CONCLUSION

REFERNCES
[1] Brain Tumor primer 9th edition ISBN-0-0944093-88-4
[2] Mubashir Ahmad, Mahmood ul-Hassan, Imran Shafi,
Abdelrahman Osman, Classification of Tumors in Human
Brain MRI using Wavelet and Support Vector Machine,
IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSRJCE),Vol.
8,No. 2, (Nov. - Dec. 2012
[3] Farmer, M.E, Jain, A.K., A wrapper-based approach
to image segmentation and classification, Image
Processing, IEEE Transactions on journals and magazines,
vol.12, PP. 2060 2072, Dec. 2005.
[4] T. Logeswari and M. Karnan, An improved
implementation of brain tumor detection using
segmentation based on soft computing, Second
International Conference on Communication Software and
Networks. ICCSN, vol.2, No.4, PP.147-151,2010.
[5] Gopal, N.N. Karnan, M., Diagnose brain tumor
through MRI using image processing clustering
algorithms such as Fuzzy C Means along with intelligent
optimization techniques.
Computational Intelligence,
Vol.2. No.1, Pp. 1 4, March 2010. .
[6] Neha Tirpude, R.R.Welekar,A study of brain magnetic
resonance image segmentation techniques. International
Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and
communication Engineering, Vol.2, Issue.1, PP.958-963,
2013.
[7] Chandrakant Biradar, Shantkumari, Measurement
based human brain tumor recognitionby adapting support
vector machine. IOSR Journal of Engineering,Vol.3,Issue9, PP.26-31, Sep 2013.
[8] R. Rajeshwari, G.Gunase Karan, Tumor detection and
segmentation using watershed and hierarchical clustering
algorithms. International Journal of Innovative Research
in Computer and communication Engineering, Vol.2, pp.
311-318, 2014.

In this paper, we implemented an algorithm for

segmentation and cropping of tumor region from MRI of
brain tumor. We applied this algorithm on 42 MRI of
brain tumor. By using this algorithm we removed artifacts
in preprocessing stage and the quality of image improved
by enhancement. The morphological operators like
erosion, dilation also used to remove additional artifacts in
the segmented image. By using histogram and global
thresholding technique, we separated out the tumor region
from background of MRI successfully. From the above
result, we concluded that our algorithm has cropped the
exact tumor region from MRI of brain tumor. From above
results we can easily get more accurate and clear idea of
tumor region.

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