Gaussian mixture model: An application to parameter estimation and medical image classification

Abstract

Gaussian mixture model based parameter estimation and classification has recently received great attention in modelling and processin g data. Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is the probabilistic model for representing the presence of subpopulations and it works well with the classification and parameter estimation strategy. Here in this work Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) based on Expectation Maximization (EM) is being used for the parameter estimation approach and the estimated parameters are being used for the training and the testing of the images for their normality and the abnormality. With the mean and the covariance calculated as the parameters they are used in the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based training of the classifier. Support Vector Machine a discriminative classifier and the Gaussian Mixture Model a generative model classifier are the two most popular techniques. The performance of the classification strategy of both the classifiers used has a better proficiency when compared to the other classifiers. By combining the SVM and GMM we co uld be able to classify at a better level since estimating the parameters through the GMM has a very few amount of features and hence it is not needed to use any of the feature reduction techniques. In this the GMM classifier and the SVM classifier are trained usin g the parameters and they are to be compared.