Journal of X-Ray Science and Technology 16 (2008) 1–8 1

IOS Press

Detection of brain tumor contours by using

edge detection method over intensity versus
perceived brightness gradients

Bahar Dirican∗ , Kaan Oysul, Alper Pahsa and Murat Beyzadeoǧu

Radiation Oncology Department Gulhane Military Medical Academy, Ankara, Turkey

Received 4 July 2007

Revised 11 October 2007
Accepted 31 October 2007

Abstract. In this work, a new contour detection method is studied for detecting brain tumor regions based on their gradient
magnitude information. Gradient magnitude data, an edge detection method, is generated from the brain slice image intensity or
perceived brightness information. Contour map of the brain tumor is generated by using the gradient magnitude differences of
the template masks (cropped from brain slice tumor image) and the sample masks (traverses the image) raw pixel and perceived
brightness (luminance) date. Then these differences are averaged and normalized to produce edge profiles of the brain tumor
region contours. This data is used by the remote surgical devices for removing the tumor area.

Keywords: Perceived brightness (luminance), gradient magnitude, contour profiling, edge detection

1. Introduction

Medical diagnosis of brain tumors played an important role in medical therapy [1]. There are many
methods in literature for detecting brain tumors [2]. Some of these methods are conventional radiology,
computer aided positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasonography and etc.
All of these techniques are used in detection of brain tumors by outlining the regional boundaries of the
tumors [11,12]. These detection systems use image information for detection. They scan anatomical
body structures with tumors at different cross sections and from different perspective angles to generate
the 3-D view of that body part. Each cross section represented a slice image of the body part. Large
number of these slices is gathered to generate the 3D structure of the body part with tumor [9,10].
This study is based on image processing techniques. Perceived brightness (luminance) information
is calculated from the image intensity amplitudes of the brain tumor regions. Gradient magnitude
algorithm is used to detect the edges as a technique. Various brain slice images with tumor are taken with
a Phillips Computer Tomography machine in Gulhane Military Medical Academy Radiology Department.
Hardcopies of CT brain slice images are digitized and scanned in a bitmap form with a Vidar System
Corporation VXR-16 film digitizer [5]. VXR-16 is digitized the CT brain slice images in 16 bit gray

∗
Corresponding author. E-mail: bahardirican@yahoo.com.

0895-3996/08/$17.00  2008 – IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved
2 B. Dirican et al. / Detection of brain tumor contours by using edge detection method

scale. Generated bitmap images are formed in 256 pixel × 256 pixel matrix form. Signal to noise ratio
of VXR-16 is very low so that the original image signal is protected during the digitization process. This
is important in protecting the image pixel content information. Pixel values in Brain slice images are
contained 256 intensity levels between 0 and 255. These values are identified as the intensity amplitudes.
The raw pixel values of the brain slice image are mapped to perceived brightness (luminance) information.
Then gradient magnitude of a sample image and a reference image are calculated individually. Difference
of the computed gradient magnitude of the sample image and the reference image is taken. Resultant
difference is normalized and averaged as points.
Processed points are graphed against the spatial coordinates. The peak points at these graphs are
denoted the transitions between the tumor and the healthy regions of the brain slice image. So the edges
of the tumor tissue regions are generated by joining these peak points.

2. Theory

To determine the brain tumor regions in healthy brain tissues, perceived brightness (luminance) values
of brain slice image was computed from the CT image of a brain slice. Luminance (perceived brightness),
was the luminous intensity per unit area. To the observer, the property of luminance corresponds to
the brightness of the source [3]. Perceived brightness information was computed from the intensity
amplitudes of the brain slice image.
In this study, perceived brightness (luminance) value was calculated according to the given formulation
below [4]:
gamm
Luminance = (pixel value /255 ) (1)

This formulation was used for the capture device response such as a camera or a PC monitor. “Gamm”
was a special function that depended on the average pixel response of the capture device. The images
were displayed on PC Monitors and the specific “Gamm” value used for these monitors was 2.2. “Pixel
Value” defined the intensity amplitude values on the brain slice image. Perceived brightness (luminance)
values of the brain slice image were computed by using Eq. (1).
In this work edge detection technique is applied on sample computed brain image slices to detect
the edges of the brain tumor regions. Initially edge term should be defined. Edges may be viewpoint
dependent-these are edges that may change as the viewpoint changes, and typically reflect the geometry
of the scene, objects occluding one another and so on, or may be viewpoint independent-these generally
reflect properties of the viewed objects such as surface markings and surface shape. In two dimensions,
and higher, the concept of perspective projection has to be considered.
A typical edge might be the border between a block of red color and block of yellow; in contrast a
line can be a small number of pixels of a different color on an otherwise unchanging background. There
will be one edge on each side of the line. Edges play quite an important role in many applications
of image processing. During recent years, however, substantial research is also made on computer
vision methods that do not explicitly rely on edge detection as pre-processing step [6]. There are many
methods that exist in literature to detect edges in images, but most of them can be grouped into two
categories, search-based and zero-crossing based. Search-based methods detect edges by looking for
maxima and minima in the first derivative of the image, usually local directional maxima of the gradient
magnitude. Zero-crossing based methods search for zero crossings in the second derivative of the image
in order to find edges, usually the zero-crossings of the Laplace or the zero-crossings of a non-linear
 B. Dirican et al. / Detection of brain tumor contours by using edge detection method 3

differential expression. One of the instances for the search based methods is the watershed detection
technique. This technique is based on water flow model and gradient information. The water-flow
process emphasizes the local edge characteristics and adaptive thresholding to water filled regions leads
to locally adaptive edge detection. Laplace operator, a zero-crossing based method, is a linear differential
operator approximating the second derivative of the image. Zero crossing methods like Laplace operator
always lie on closed contours so the output of the zero crossing detectors is usually a binary image with
single pixel thickness lines showing the positions of the zero crossing points. Search based methods
like watershed segmentation, remove the irrelevant minima by modifying the gradient information. So
the watershed regions are merged together to construct the edges. However this process is dangerous
such that some of the image information is lost during the edge detection process. Since the objective
behind this work is to detect the edges of the brain tumors using the perceived brightness information
measured from the image without loosing the detailed contour information. Image enhancement process
is especially overridden in this study. Since the enhancement process changes the threshold values of
the pixel information this will effect the gradient information. So that the resultant output will clearly
represent the brain tumor contours. Since these disadvantages of the search based contour detection
methods and zero crossing based methods as an edge detection method in this study, gradient magnitude
algorithm is used to compute the boundaries of the image samples. An edge has the one-dimensional
shape of a ramp and calculating the derivative of the image can highlight its location [7]. Gradient of an
image is calculated with the following formulation [8]:


∂f ∂f
∇f = , (2)
∂x ∂y
Edge strength of the image is calculated with the gradient magnitude formulation which is used in
this work. Reference and sample masks gradients are compared over the differences of each gradient
magnitude computation of the both masks. Gradient magnitude calculation is performed over the
following formula [8]:
   2
∂f 2 ∂f
∇f  = + (3)
∂x ∂y

Once the 256 × 256 pixel values of the brain slice image are converted into perceived brightness
(luminance) values, a 3 × 3 reference mask image from the healthy part of the brain slice image is
selected. A reference mask is identified as the average of the 3 same size masks which are extracted
from the regions between the tumor (radio oncologist verified) area and the skull tissue. Reference mask
is produced with a nondeterministic approach by using mask preparation software. Figure 1 shows the
mask preparation schema for deriving reference masks.
A point is selected on each line in the healthy region and this point is taken as the corner point of a 3 ×3
mask by the software. The intensity amplitude of these selected masks (3 masks in Fig. 1) is averaged
to generate a single reference mask. Resultant reference mask (in 3 × 3 pixels) is used in edge detection
software. It is moved horizontally on the original image so that gradient magnitude values of the every
sample mask location across the brain slice image is computed over the perceived brightness (luminance)
values. At the same instance gradient magnitude calculation of the reference mask perceived brightness
(luminance) information is calculated as separate information. Sample mask’s gradient magnitude
information is subtracted from the reference mask’s gradient magnitude values. Resultant difference
matrices are normalized and averaged to generate a single point. These resultant points are plotted
4 B. Dirican et al. / Detection of brain tumor contours by using edge detection method

Fig. 1. 3 × 3 reference masks determination by averaging technique. 3 × 3 intensity amplitudes at the same mask coordinates
are added and divided to 3 to get the 3 × 3 average intensity amplitudes at that resultant mask.

against the spatial coordinates. For each instant location that the sample mask is moved horizontally
on the image, a maximum average point is generated on the graph. These peaks corresponded to the
transitions between the brain tumor regions and the healthy tissues on the brain slice image. The peaks
were used to draw the contour profile of the brain tumor regions by the software.

3. Procedure

A menu driven visual software is developed with a Borland C++ Builder V6.0 application developer.
On the brain slice image; a reference mask, to traverse the image, and a sample mask, cropped region
from the image, are created by the software. They had varied pixel sizes of 3 × 3, 10 × 10, and
15 × 15. In this paper 3 × 3 pixel size is used. The intensity distribution within these masks was
extracted from the brain slice image as intensity amplitudes between 0 and 255. They are converted into
perceived brightness (luminance) values with Eq. (1). An example of 3 × 3 sample mask containing
pixel amplitudes and perceived brightness (luminance) values are shown in Fig. 2.
Sample mask’s and the reference mask’s perceived brightness values gradient magnitude information
is calculated at every location of the sample mask across the brain slice image and their difference is
taken. Initially, experimental edge detection software program is tested with a test image as shown in
Fig. 3.
 B. Dirican et al. / Detection of brain tumor contours by using edge detection method 5

Fig. 2. 3 × 3 sample mask a) pixel amplitude values b) Perceived Brightness (Luminance).

Fig. 3. Image of the test pattern and the perceived brightness (luminance) gradient magnitude difference peaks shown for 2
scans across the brain slice image.

As it was seen in Fig. 3, the transitions from dark to bright regions on the test pattern image were
seen as the gradient magnitude difference peaks. The difference of the perceived brightness (luminance)
gradient magnitude peaks are generated in gradient magnitude difference graphs for every scan across
any image. These scans are carried out with the mask size 3 × 3. Mask sizes 10 ×10 and 15 × 15 also
gave equally good peaks in gradient magnitude difference graphs.
Finally the program is tried with the real brain slice image as shown in Fig. 4. The tumor area is
outlined with a chemical dye to assist the researchers. Gradient magnitude difference graphs were plotted
as the reference mask traversed across the tumor region on the brain slice image. The gradient magnitude
6 B. Dirican et al. / Detection of brain tumor contours by using edge detection method

Fig. 4. Brain slice image, gradient magnitude difference peaks based on perceived brightness (luminance) information across
the tumor area and the contour plots of these peaks.

peaks are again generated for every scan as shown in Fig. 4.

Same edge detection technique was used with intensity amplitudes (raw pixel values) in contour
detection for comparison purposes. An MxM pixel sample mask and a reference mask areas are selected
across the brain slice image. The reference mask is moved horizontally across the brain slice image.
Then at each location gradient magnitude information is calculated for reference and template mask.
Gradient magnitude of the both reference and template mask is subtracted from each based on a sampling
mask area. The resultant gradient magnitude differences are plotted against the scan positions across the
image. The coefficient peaks across the plots similarly represented the transitions between the healthy
and tumor areas.
The first and the last maximum peaks in every scan corresponded to the outer boundaries of the tumor
region. These peaks are filtered out by the software and joined together to produce the 2D contours of
the brain tumor region on the brain slice image. Figure 5 displayed the contour generated by using raw
pixel information.
Comparisons are made between the resultant contour boundary coordinates obtained from the raw
pixel data and the perceived brightness (luminance) data for the same tumor region. The data in Table 1
showed that the difference between the coordinates of two contours across the same scan lines was very
 B. Dirican et al. / Detection of brain tumor contours by using edge detection method 7

Fig. 5. Contour plots of the tumor area by using raw pixel information and gradient magnitude difference technique.

small.
Hence it was justified that the perceived brightness information is valid information such as pixel
information to compute the contours of the tumors on a brain slice image.

4. Conclusions

In this study, perceived brightness data is used together with the edge detection approach. This method
is based on the gradient magnitude difference between the template mask and the sample masks gradient
magnitude differences. These differences are then averaged and normalized to generate gradient points.
These detected boundary points of dissimilar points, namely transitions of bright and dark regions in
test patterns in Fig. 2 and the transitions of tumor and healthy brain tissue regions in Fig. 3 are given
in maximum peaks. These peaks are plotted as contours maps of the above transitions. Perceived
brightness (luminance) values are generated from the pixel intensity values on the brain slice image with
Eq. (1). The results showed that the edge detection based on the gradient magnitude difference algorithm
based on the perceived brightness (luminance) values used in this study generated the contour lines of
the brain tumor region. The technique, introduced here, was as good as the other pattern extraction and
8 B. Dirican et al. / Detection of brain tumor contours by using edge detection method

identification techniques. These contour lines or the contour points across the brain slice image were
stored in the computer, digitally, and they were available to be used with any automated surgical tool for
the operation.

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