title: Drosophila Eye Nuclei Segmentation Based on Graph Cut and Convex Shape Prior.
abstract: The rapid advance in three-dimensional (3D) confocal imaging technologies is rapidly increasing the availability of 3D cellular images. However, the lack of robust automated methods for the extraction of cell or organelle shapes from the images is hindering researchers ability to take full advantage of the increase in experimental output. The lack of appropriate methods is particularly significant when the density of the features of interest in high, such as in the developing eye of the fruit fly. Here, we present a novel and efficient nuclei segmentation algorithm based on the combination of graph cut and convex shape prior. The main characteristic of the algorithm is that it segments nuclei foreground using a graph cut algorithm and splits overlapping or touching cell nuclei by simple convex and concavity analysis, using a convex shape assumption for nuclei contour. We evaluate the performance of our method by applying it to a library of publicly-available two-dimensional (2D) images that were hand-labeled by experts. Our algorithm yields a substantial quantitative improvement over other methods for this benchmark. For example, our method achieves a decrease of 3.2 in the Hausdorff distance and an decrease of 1.8 per slice in the merged nuclei error.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: Molecular Biosciences, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: NICO and Dept. Chemical & Biological Engineering, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Pelaez
authors.affiliation: HHMI, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Rebay
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Electronic Science & Technology of China, 2006 Xiyuan Avenue, Gaoxin District, Chengdu, Sichuan Province 611731, China.
authors.forename: R W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Carthew
authors.affiliation: Ben May Center for Cancer Research, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Katsaggelos
authors.forename: L A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Nunes Amaral
keywords: convex and concavity analysis; drosophila eye; fluorescence microscopy image; graph cut; nuclei segmentation
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