title: Geostatistical and morphological methods applied to three-dimensional microscopy.
abstract: Three-dimensional (3-D) images of osteocyte lacunae were examined on a confocal microscope. Both geostatistical and morphological processing techniques were used to improve and to analyse them. By a geostastical approach, this study aims at improving 3-D confocal images before any further image processing. Optimized linear filters, which take account of the second-order statistics and the 3-D structure of the data, allow for the removal of imperfections such as noise and/or blur due to the axial convolution, and interpolate voxels on a face-centred cubic grid from an initial cubic grid. An application of this technique to 3-D biological images is demonstrated. In a second step, a 3-D binary image is digitized and cleaned with 3-D morphological filters. The standard 3-D measurements cannot be applied in this case, since all osteocytes cut the border of the field. For this reason a 3-D Boolean model has been adjusted, from which it is possible to derive all useful information on the repartition and the morphology of the osteocytes.
authors.affiliation: Centre de Morphologie Mathématique, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Fountainebleau, France.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Conan
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gesbert
authors.forename: C V
authors.initials: CV
authors.lastname: Howard
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jeulin
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Renard
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008334:Mandible / Q000166:cytology*; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence; D010011:Osteocytes / Q000648:ultrastructure*