title: Hierarchical mergence approach to cell detection in phase contrast microscopy images.
abstract: Phase contrast microscope is one of the most universally used instruments to observe long-term cell movements in different solutions. Most of classic segmentation methods consider a homogeneous patch as an object, while the recorded cell images have rich details and a lot of small inhomogeneous patches, as well as some artifacts, which can impede the applications. To tackle these challenges, this paper presents a hierarchical mergence approach (HMA) to extract homogeneous patches out and heuristically add them up. Initially, the maximum region of interest (ROI), in which only cell events exist, is drawn by using gradient information as a mask. Then, different levels of blurring based on kernel or grayscale morphological operations are applied to the whole image to produce reference images. Next, each of unconnected regions in the mask is applied with Otsu method independently according to different reference images. Consequently, the segmentation result is generated by the combination of usable patches in all informative layers. The proposed approach is more than simply a fusion of the basic segmentation methods, but a well-organized strategy that integrates these basic methods. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms previous methods within our datasets.
authors.affiliation: College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China.
authors.forename: Jianhua
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7844-6035
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China.
authors.forename: Shengyong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350007, China.
authors.forename: Yao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, 22527 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Chunyan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, 22527 Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Jianwei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000737:chemistry; D016477:Artifacts; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D049109:Cell Proliferation; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D008858:Microscopy, Phase-Contrast / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents