Heliyon (Mar 2024)
ROI extraction in corona virus (COVID 19) CT images using intuitionistic fuzzy edge detection
Abstract
Edge detection is a vital aspect of medical image processing, playing a key role in delineating borders and contours within images. This capability is instrumental for various applications, including segmentation, feature extraction, and diagnostic procedures in the realm of medical imaging. COVID-19 is a deadly disease affecting people in most of countries in the world. COVID-19 is due to the coronavirus which belongs to the family of RNA viruses and causes various symptoms such as pneumonia, fever, breathing difficulty, and lung infection. ROI extraction plays a vital role in disease diagnosis and therapeutic treatment. CT scans can help detect abnormalities in the lungs that are characteristic of COVID-19, such as ground-glass opacities and consolidation. This research work proposes an Intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) edge detector for the segmentation of COVID-19 CT images. Intuitionistic fuzzy sets go beyond conventional fuzzy sets by incorporating an additional parameter, referred to as the hesitation degree or non-membership degree. This extra parameter enhances the ability to represent uncertainty more intricately in expressing the degree to which an element may or may not belong to a set. The IF edge detector generates proficient results, when compared with the traditional edge detection algorithms and is validated in terms of performance metrics for benchmark images. Intuitionistic fuzzy edge detection has been shown to be effective in handling uncertainty and imprecision in edge detection.