title: A Model-based approach for microvasculature structure distortion correction in two-photon fluorescence microscopy images.
abstract: This paper investigates a postprocessing approach to correct spatial distortion in two-photon fluorescence microscopy images for vascular network reconstruction. It is aimed at in vivo imaging of large field-of-view, deep-tissue studies of vascular structures. Based on simple geometric modelling of the object-of-interest, a distortion function is directly estimated from the image volume by deconvolution analysis. Such distortion function is then applied to subvolumes of the image stack to adaptively adjust for spatially varying distortion and reduce the image blurring through blind deconvolution. The proposed technique was first evaluated in phantom imaging of fluorescent microspheres that are comparable in size to the underlying capillary vascular structures. The effectiveness of restoring three-dimensional (3D) spherical geometry of the microspheres using the estimated distortion function was compared with empirically measured point-spread function. Next, the proposed approach was applied to in vivo vascular imaging of mouse skeletal muscle to reduce the image distortion of the capillary structures. We show that the proposed method effectively improve the image quality and reduce spatially varying distortion that occurs in large field-of-view deep-tissue vascular dataset. The proposed method will help in qualitative interpretation and quantitative analysis of vascular structures from fluorescence microscopy images.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Cardiac Energetics, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A.|Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The Catholic University of America, Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Lam
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dao
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Cardiac Energetics, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Glancy
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Cardiac Energetics, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Bertrand
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lucotte
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The Catholic University of America, Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Lin-Ching
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Cardiac Energetics, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Robert S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Balaban
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Cardiac Energetics, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Li-Yueh
authors.initials: LY
authors.lastname: Hsu
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D016477:Artifacts; D004867:Equipment Design; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods; D000069416:Intravital Microscopy / Q000379:methods; D051379:Mice; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D055806:Microvessels / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal / Q000098:blood supply / Q000648:ultrastructure; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D017785:Photons; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Distortion Correction; image deconvolution and restoration; vascular Imaging