Asian Journal Of Computer Science And Information Technology 3 : 4 (2013) 56 - 59.

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Asian Journal of Computer Science And Information Technology

Journal Homepage: http://www.innovativejournal.in/index.php/ajcsit

FIREFLY ALGORITHM BASED MAMMOGRAPHIC IMAGE ANALYSIS

Goutam Das, Md. Iqbal Quraishi, Manisha Barman

Dept. of Information Technology Kalyani Govt. Engineering College, Nadia, India

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Corresponding Author:
Goutam das
Dept. of Information Technology,
Kalyani Govt Engineering
College, Kalyani, Nadia, India
Keywords: - Mammographic
Images, Firefly Algorithm, Image
Enhancement, K-Means,
Segmentation, Self Organizing
Map, Clustering, Peak Signal To
Noise Ratio, Histogram,
Computer Vision
Mammography images are used to detect tumor formation within breast
tissues. It works as a monitoring stage where a medical practitioner judges
that the probability of cancer. Several image processing techniques in
conjunction with various algorithms shows ways to enhance and detect large
tissue lumps. But the domain of new nature inspired metaheuristic algorithms
remains untouched. Generally these algorithm are meant to solve optimization
problems but this study attempts to involve one of the algorithms which is
known as Firefly algorithm, to enhance the quality of mammographic image by
enhancing the edge details and contrast. As this shown, next the enhanced
result is segmented using self organizing map (SOM) to properly visualize the
large tissue lump formation within breast, which is then clustered using K-
means algorithm. The results of enhancement also shown via pick signal to
noise ratio and histogram difference. Whereas segmentation results are
presented for visual analysis only, because of the reason that mammographic
images needs to be analyzed by medical practitioners as appears on screen.

2013, AJCSIT, All Right Reserved.

INTRODUCTION
The challenge of computer vision remains within
the fact that visually clear representation of image after
processing. Researchers already been developed a variety
of useful tools to achieve this objective. But still the
challenge remains open because of enormous development
in the field of machine intelligence in combination with
computer vision. Denoising and enhancement remains a
core task to be performed before to meet an objective.
Mammography images suffer from the same problem too.
Digitization of mammogram is not new, but analysis of
which make the task critical. In general mammograms are
used to identify cancer probability, in the context of lump
or a mass called tumor, which is known as malignant
tumor. The severity of the problem can be identified from
the fact that more than 400,000 women die every year
from this health problem [1]. In most cases of cancer, if
detected early, there remains a high probability to be
cured. Early detection of malignant glandular tissues is a
critical task. In computer vision the objective should be to
build a system that can highlight the regions of highly
dense tumor like structure within breast. The final decision
should depend upon medical practitioners, rather than
machine intelligence and the system should work like a
decision support system to the professionals of the job. To
achieve this objective enhancement of the mammographic
image is trivial, after which further processing can be
implied. [2] Based on morphological operation such as top-
hat transform and bottom-hat transform had been used to
increase the contrast of mammographic image, to help in
detecting cancer probable regions. Micro-calcification
clusters enhancement and identification based on wavelet
decomposition and B-spline had been introduced [3], with
encouraging results. Histogram equalization based
approach in mammographic images in comparison with
local histogram enhancement method shows that root
mean squared error (RMSE) and pick signal to noise ratio
(PSNR) remains within the range of 25 and 12 respectively
as compared with 12 and 58 for the other [4]. A mixture of
histogram processing and fuzzy to reduce noise and
enhance the quality of mammographic image was proposed
and tested across 50 test images [5] proved to be an
effective solution in terms of segmentation accuracy. In the
paper [6] a modified mathematical morphology and Bi-
orthogonal wavelet transform had been used. The results
shows, contrast Improvement Index (CII) and Edge
Preservation Index (EPI) shows that the proposed method
yields significantly better image quality when compared
with other contemporary methods. Testing the effects of
several preprocessing segmentation methods [7], it was
suggested that segmentation can be applied on
mammographic images before further processing or as a
preprocessing step. Combining Gabor algorithm with fast
Fourier transform and overlay mask segmentation [8],
shows enhancement of edges which increase visibility of
thin tissues far better. For mass screening of
mammographic images a wavelet-based multiresolution
analysis [9] was performed to show an efficient adaptively
enhance local edge features, suppress noise, and improve
global visualization. In an early paper on mammography
[10], region based contrast enhancement been performed
to show visibility of microcalcification clusters. An edge-
based segmentation method based on region of interest

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 Das et.al/Firefly Algorithm based Mammographic Image Analysis
was proposed using contrast stretching and filtering
respectively [11] to detect contours. However the
performance regarding various breast density levels found
to be not so encouraging. A review of existing processing
techniques on mammographic images shows [12] how
decomposition methods such as Quad tree Decomposition,
Discrete Wavelet Transform, Dual Tree Complex Wavelet
Transform, Pyramid-Structured Wavelet Transform, Gabor
Wavelets been used till now, though it does not prescribe
any general trend in this area. The implementation of
adaptive contrast enhancement using multiscale
representation [13] proves to show wavelet based
algorithm can produce better results. Wavelet based local
feature enhancement of mammographic images on
multiscale basis could result in desired outcome but
clinically cannot be extrapolated directly [14] [15]. The
application of metaheuristics in either small or large scale
has not been found. As this is said, nature inspired
metaheuristics not been considered well enough, as these
algorithms are opening doors for a complete new chapter
of computer vision and machine intelligence. Algorithms
such as Harmony search, Firefly algorithm, Artificial Bee
Colony, Cuckoo Search are yet to be tested. In this study an
attempt has been made to show how these nature inspired
algorithms can provide effective result in mammographic
image with some existing techniques. Firefly algorithm is
implemented to enhance the mammographic image for
edge information enhancement and overall contrast
enhancement, as a preprocessing stage and this enhanced
image is then feed into self organizing map (SOM) and
further an adaptive K-means algorithm is implemented for
clustering the segmented region to show the final outcome
of the proposed approach.
METHODOLOGY
A. Firefly Algorithm:
The Firefly algorithm was developed by Xin-She Yang [16]
[17], on the basis of flashing light behavior of fireflies in
nature. The fundamental function of the glowing light is to
attract mate during mating session, where male firefly uses
a brief signal pattern and female firefly respond in certain
time interval for the same species. The pattern of flashes is
often unique for a particular species of fireflies. A three rule
base of firefly was established,
1) All fireflies are unisex, so that one firefly is
attracted to other fireflies regardless of their sex.
2) The less bright one will move towards the brighter
one. The value of brightness is proportional to
brightness, which is reverse proportional to their
distances.
3) Brightness of each firefly is determined by
evaluating objective function. If there is no
brighter one than a particular firefly, it will move
randomly.
The brightness of a firefly is affected or determined by the
landscape of the objective function to be optimized [18]
[19]. For a maximization problem, the brightness is simply
proportional to the value of the objective function.
The algorithm itself proposes some initializations that
include:
1) : the light absorption coefficient
2) r: the particular distance from the light source
3) d: the domain space.
The general algorithm of firefly:
57
Define the objective function of f(x), where x=(x1,........,xd)T
Generate the initial population of fireflies or xi (i=1, 2,.., n)
Determine the light intensity of Ii at xi via f(xi)
While (t<MaxGen)
For i = 1 to n (all n fireflies);
For j=1 to n (n fireflies)
if (Ij > Ii), move firefly i
towards j;
end if
Attractiveness varies with distance r via Exp
[-r2];
Evaluate new solutions and update light
intensity;
End for j;
End for i;
Rank the fireflies and find the current best;
End while;
Postprocess results and visualisation;
End procedure;
Alpha determines random percentage in firefly moving. It
includes value between zeros to one. Absorption coefficient
is named gamma. The constraint varies between zeros to
extreme. If Coefficient is close to zero, then =0 and this
corresponds to a special case of particle swarm
optimization. Besides, if absorption coefficient is close
particularly, this is the case where the fireflies fly in a very
foggy region randomly. Finally 0 is maximum
Attractiveness value [20].
Each firefly i can move toward another more attractive
(brighter) firefly j by equation [21].
xi = xi + 0er2 ij (Xj - Xi) + (rand -1/2) (1)
r is the distance
0 is attractiveness
is light absorption coefficient
Figure 1: the original image
B. Firefly Algorithm for image enhancement:
In conjunction with the above algorithm and derivations,
below the strategy is given to meet the problem objective
1) Initial population: Total number of image pixels.
2) MaxGen: intensity variation through iteration.
3) If the previous pixel value is greater than of
current pixel value after considering the fitness
evaluation, which depends upon the global
intensity values of the image, it should be replaced.
4) As attractiveness varies with distance, the
boundary value of the window size, that is 3x3 in
this case, is considered. Any value that crosses the
boundary, it was ignored.
5) After each iteration, the global best in
consideration in accordance to the window size
was updated and the highest intensity value of that
iteration was considered for the previous update.
The rank of the firefly was updated.
6) The value of gamma which is the absorption rate
was considered to give a smoothing effect for the
 Das et.al/Firefly Algorithm based Mammographic Image Analysis
image. The value of which will be image specific.
0, contains the attractiveness which is then
updated according to the rank matrix.
Firefly algorithm does not memorize or remember any
history of better situation for each firefly and this causes
them to move regardless of its previous better situation,
and they may end up missing their situations[ijisa].
Figure 2: after enhancement
C. SOM based segmentation:
The main characteristic of SOM is that it helps to produce
segmentation easily the regions of the image that has
similar features [23]. This is the most well-known
unsupervised approach using ANN, the self-organizing
feature maps (SOFM), developed by Kohonen [24].
Basically it is two layers model, which consists, the first
layer as the input nodes and the second as the output nodes
[25]. Based on the weight center of the input matrix, the
neighborhood values are determined which acts as a
feature matrix for the input image. the Markov Random
Field model was used to reduce the effect of noise upto a
limit of =0.0195. However entropy values are also
considered where no satisfactory result was found. The
similarity is defined by the Euclidian distance of two
segmented parts. This is,
SNN = [su,v] (2)
Figure 3: After segmentation
D. K-means clustering:
Clustering, that is grouping of similar data point into one,
which behaves same under some measure. In kmeans, it
finds local optima by keeping track of centroids [26].
1) Input samples
2) No. of clusters
3) Initial cluster centre
4) For every point of x there remains
a center Ci, which is closed to x.
5) Calculating by every iteration
and increasing the step size of
Ci+1 .
Depending upon the above three parameters, the
segmented image has been taken with the window size of
3x3, based upon weight center. After which based upon the
weight center the initial cluster centers were identified,
58
which through a iteration was increased in the consequent
stages, that effectively draws clustering of the data
patterns.
Figure 4: After clustering
RESULTS
The results of this methodology found to very encouraging.
Quality of the enhanced image (Figure2) as compared with
original image (Figure1) shows the visual improvements.
PSNR of the original image was 28.996, which was
increased after the firefly based enhancement to 41.379.
The SOM segmentation proves to be very effective in terms
identifying the cluster centers and weight centers for
further processing. The probable tumor region was
identified in SOM. Applying K-means clustering next shows
the exact tumor region with an increased visibility.
CONCLUSION
The study attempts to provide a nature inspired
metaheuristic approach where firefly algorithm was
implemented with unsupervised learning that can
effectively identify the problem region in mammographic
image. The system discussed here act as a support
mechanism for decision making, where the end decision
depends upon the medical practitioner. The overall
performance of the system is also computationally less
expensive. However SOM is an unsupervised learning
methodology which involves increase in computational
time. This is minute problem, as it can be overcome as the
system will be independent of nature in terms of
implementation.
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