Multiple Feature Fuzzy c-means Clustering Algorithm for Segmentation of Microarray Images

Abstract

Microarray technology allows the simultaneous monitoring of thousands of genes. Based on the gene expression measurements, microarray technology have proven powerful in gene expression profiling for discovering new types of diseases and for predicting the type of a disease. Gridding, segmentation and intensity extraction are the three important steps in microarray image analysis. Clustering algorithms have been used for microarray image segmentation with an advantage that they are not restricted to a particular shape and size for the spots. Instead of using single feature clustering algorithm, this paper presents multiple feature clustering algorithm with three features for each pixel such as pixel intensity, distance from the center of the spot and median of surrounding pixels. In all the traditional clustering algorithms, number of clusters and initial centroids are randomly selected and often specified by the user.  In this paper, a new algorithm based on empirical mode decomposition algorithm for the histogram of the input image will generate the number of clusters and initial centroids required for clustering.   It overcomes the shortage of random initialization in traditional clustering and achieves high computational speed by reducing the number of iterations. The experimental results show that multiple feature Fuzzy C-means has segmented the microarray image more accurately than other algorithms.