title: A fully automated approach to segmentation of irregularly shaped cellular structures in EM images.
abstract: While there has been substantial progress in segmenting natural images, state-of-the-art methods that perform well in such tasks unfortunately tend to underperform when confronted with the different challenges posed by electron microscope (EM) data. For example, in EM imagery of neural tissue, numerous cells and subcellular structures appear within a single image, they exhibit irregular shapes that cannot be easily modeled by standard techniques, and confusing textures clutter the background. We propose a fully automated approach that handles these challenges by using sophisticated cues that capture global shape and texture information, and by learning the specific appearance of object boundaries. We demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art techniques and closely matches the performance of human annotators.
authors.affiliation: Computer Vision Lab, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Aurélien
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lucchi
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Radhakrishna
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Achanta
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lepetit
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Fua
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008854:Microscopy, Electron / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013347:Subcellular Fractions / Q000648:ultrastructure*