Conditional spatial fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm for segmentation of MRI images.

•A conditional spatial fuzzy C-means (csFCM) clustering algorithm to improve the robustness of the conventional FCM algorithm is presented.•The method incorporates conditional affects and spatial information into the membership functions.•The algorithm resolves the problem of sensitivity to noise and intensity inhomogeneity in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data.•The experimental results on four volumes of simulated and one volume of real-patient MRI brain images, each one having 51 images, support efficiency of the csFCM algorithm.•The csFCM algorithm has superior performance in terms of qualitative and quantitative studies on the image segmentation results than the k-means, FCM and some other recently proposed FCM-based algorithms.