Application of fractal theory and fuzzy enhancement in ultrasound image segmentation.

The manuscript describes an ultrasound image segmentation technique based on the fractional Brownian motion (FBM) model. Here, the ultrasound images are first enhanced using a fuzzy-based technique, and later the FBM model is employed to obtain the fractal features used for segmentation. The novelty lies in combining the fuzzy-enhancement technique and FBM model, and further illustrating that fractal length-based segmentation provides better results than fractal dimension-based segmentation. Experimental results on ultrasound images of carotid artery clearly illustrate that the segmentation outputs obtained from fractal length are superior, and the high qualitative values of DSC, Precision, Recall and F1 score (0.9617, 0.9629, 0.9653 and 0.9641 respectively), together with a low value of APD (1.9316), indicate that the proposed method is comparable to other state-of-the-art segmentation techniques. Graphical abstract Summary of proposed technique - overall design flow.