CLUSTERING MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUBGROUPS WITH MULTIFRACTAL METHODS AND SELF-ORGANIZING MAP ALGORITHM

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the most sensitive method to detect chronic nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). In this paper, Brownian motion Holder regularity functions (polynomial, periodic (sine), exponential) for 2D image, such as multifractal methods were applied to MR brain images, aiming to easily identify distressed regions, in MS patients. With these regions, we have proposed an MS classification based on the multifractal method by using the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) algorithm. Thus, we obtained a cluster analysis by identifying pixels from distressed regions in MR images through multifractal methods and by diagnosing subgroups of MS patients through artificial neural networks.