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Illumination-Free Clustering Using Improved Slime Mould Algorithm for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Image Segmentation

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Abstract

Partitional clustering techniques such as K-Means (KM), Fuzzy C-Means (FCM), and Rough K-Means (RKM) are very simple and effective techniques for image segmentation. But, because their initial cluster centers are randomly determined, it is often seen that certain clusters converge to local optima. In addition to that, pathology image segmentation is also problematic due to uneven lighting, stain, and camera settings during the microscopic image capturing process. Therefore, this study proposes an Improved Slime Mould Algorithm (ISMA) based on opposition based learning and differential evolution’s mutation strategy to perform illumination-free White Blood Cell (WBC) segmentation. The ISMA helps to overcome the local optima trapping problem of the partitional clustering techniques to some extent. This paper also performs a depth analysis by considering only color components of many well-known color spaces for clustering to find the effect of illumination over color pathology image clustering. Numerical and visual results encourage the utilization of illumination-free or color component-based clustering approaches for image segmentation. ISMA-KM and “ab” color channels of CIELab color space provide best results with above-99% accuracy for only nucleus segmentation. Whereas, for entire WBC segmentation, ISMA-KM and the “CbCr” color component of YCbCr color space provide the best results with an accuracy of above 99%. Furthermore, ISMA-KM and ISMA-RKM have the lowest and highest execution times, respectively. On the other hand, ISMA provides competitive outcomes over CEC2019 benchmark test functions compared to recent well-established and efficient Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithms (NIOAs).

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Acknowledgements

This work has been partially supported with the grant received in research project under RUSA 2.0 component 8, Govt. of India, New Delhi.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Application, Midnapore College (Autonomous), Paschim Medinipur, Midnapore, West Bengal, India

    Krishna Gopal Dhal & Arunita Das

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Swarnajit Ray

  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Kalyani Government Engineering College, Kalyani, West Bengal, India

    Sudip Barik

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KGD: method development, analyzed and interpreted the data and wrote the paper; SR: conceived and designed the experiments; SB: performed the experiments; AD: revised the writing and supervised the experiments;

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Correspondence to Krishna Gopal Dhal.

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Dhal, K.G., Ray, S., Barik, S. et al. Illumination-Free Clustering Using Improved Slime Mould Algorithm for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Image Segmentation. J Bionic Eng 20, 2916–2934 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-023-00392-4

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