Ant colony based fish crowding degree optimization algorithm for magnetic resonance imaging segmentation in sports knee joint injury assessment

The aim was to analyse the application value of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the injury evaluation of posterolateral corner (PLC) caused by sports, and the ant colony-based crowding degree of fish swarm optimization algorithm for image segmentation optimization of MRI images. The crowding degree of fish swarm was introduced to construct the ant colony optimization algorithm (ACOA), and the maximum and minimum ant system (MMAS) and ant colony algorithm based on variation features (VF-based ACA) were introduced to compare with ACOA. Besides, ACOA was applied to the MRI diagnosis of 98 patients with PLC injuries. Then the number of Degree I, Degree II, and Degree III in PLC patients were compared. The results showed that the iteration times and running time of the optimal solution were obtained by ACOA when the number of cities was 10, which were compared with those obtained by MMAS and VF-based ACA with no great differences (P > 0.05), and the iteration times and running time of ACOA were greater than those of MMAS and VF-based ACA when the number of cities was 50 (P < 0.05). There were 73 patients with PLC injuries involved 2 or more structures, 11 patients with PLC injuries only involved the lateral collateral ligament (LCL), and 7 patients with PLC injuries only involved the popliteal tendon (PLT). The injury rates of LCL, medial collateral ligament, anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), posterior cruciate ligament (PCL), and PLT were 87.02%, 51.33%, 72.45%, 41.75%, and 84.06%, respectively. The number of patients with PLC injuries combined with Grade I of LCL, PCL, ACL, PCL, biceps femoris tendon, and PLT was higher than that of patients with Grade II and III (P < 0.05). In conclusion, ACOA was much better than MMAS and VF-based ACA in dealing with complex work, which effectively improved the ergodicity of search and reduced the running time. There were more common in PLC injuries combined with LCL, PCL, ACL, PCL, and PLT, MRI images based on ACOA could clearly show the degree of ligament and tendon injuries.