title: A 3D Primary Vessel Reconstruction Framework with Serial Microscopy Images.
abstract: Three dimensional microscopy images present significant potential to enhance biomedical studies. This paper presents an automated method for quantitative analysis of 3D primary vessel structures with histology whole slide images. With registered microscopy images of liver tissue, we identify primary vessels with an improved variational level set framework at each 2D slide. We propose a Vessel Directed Fitting Energy (VDFE) to provide prior information on vessel wall probability in an energy minimization paradigm. We find the optimal vessel cross-section associations along the image sequence with a two-stage procedure. Vessel mappings are first found between each pair of adjacent slides with a similarity function for four association cases. These bi-slide vessel components are further linked by Bayesian Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) estimation where the posterior probability is modeled as a Markov chain. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated with 54 whole slide microscopy images of sequential sections from a human liver.
authors.affiliation: Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
authors.forename: Yanhui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Fusheng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK.
authors.forename: Darren
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Treanor
authors.affiliation: The University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
authors.forename: Derek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Magee
authors.affiliation: University of Brasília, Brasília, DF, Brazil.
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Teodoro
authors.forename: Yangyang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kong
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D001808:Blood Vessels / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods*; D008099:Liver / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D008853:Microscopy / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity