Fractal Dimension in Medical Imaging: A Review

The latest research works have revealed that fractal geometry, a measure of irregular contours, inconvenient for describing the various pathological architectures like tumors (for yielding insights into the tumor growth), different MR (magnetic-response) image analysis, neuro imaging analysis, bone fracture measurement and many more. Researchers major attraction towards fractal geometry lie in the accuracy and effectiveness of the medical images despite their randomness and roughness. Magnetic-resonance or MR images usually pose a degree of noise and randomness is associated with the natural nature of structure. Most of the image intensity based existing method is either profound to strong noise or not appropriate to diverse imaging modalities. Hence fractal analysis is suitable for MR image analysis and therefore significant research has been done on fractal geometry in various aspects of medical image rather than focusing on modern molecular methods. This article outlines the basic approaches of fractal geometry and debates the significance and application of fractal dimension (FD) in different medical image analysis.