title: Cell-sensitive phase contrast microscopy imaging by multiple exposures.
abstract: We propose a novel way of imaging live cells in a Petri dish by the phase contrast microscope. By taking multiple exposures of phase contrast microscopy images on the same cell dish, we estimate a cell-sensitive camera response function which responds to cells' irradiance signals but generates a constant on non-cell background signal. The result of this new microscopy imaging is visually superior quality, which reveals the appearance details of cells and suppresses background noise near zero. Using the cell-sensitive microscopy imaging, cells' original irradiance signals are restored from all exposures and the irradiance signals on non-cell background regions are restored as a uniform constant (i.e., the imaging system is sensitive to cells only but insensitive to non-cell background). The restored irradiance signals greatly facilitate the cell segmentation by simple thresholding. The experimental results validate that high quality cell segmentation can be achieved by our approach.
authors.affiliation: Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409 USA. Electronic address: yinz@mst.edu.
authors.forename: Zhaozheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua University, China.
authors.forename: Hang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Stanford University, USA.
authors.forename: Elmer
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ker
authors.affiliation: Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409 USA.
authors.forename: Mingzhong
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409 USA.
authors.forename: Haohan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D058948:Cell Tracking / Q000379:methods*; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008858:Microscopy, Phase-Contrast / Q000379:methods*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013382:Subtraction Technique
keywords: Cell image segmentation; Image restoration; Microscopy image analysis; Microscopy imaging model