Semi-automated segmentation of neuroblastoma nuclei using the gradient energy tensor: a user driven approach

Florian Kromp; Sabine Taschner-Mandl; Magdalena Schwarz; Johanna Blaha; Tamara Weiss; Peter F. Ambros; Michael Reiter

doi:10.1117/12.2181227

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14 February 2015 Semi-automated segmentation of neuroblastoma nuclei using the gradient energy tensor: a user driven approach

Florian Kromp, Sabine Taschner-Mandl, Magdalena Schwarz, Johanna Blaha, Tamara Weiss, Peter F. Ambros, Michael Reiter

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Proceedings Volume 9445, Seventh International Conference on Machine Vision (ICMV 2014); 94451K (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2181227
Event: Seventh International Conference on Machine Vision (ICMV 2014), 2014, Milan, Italy

Abstract

We propose a user-driven method for the segmentation of neuroblastoma nuclei in microscopic fluorescence images involving the gradient energy tensor. Multispectral fluorescence images contain intensity and spatial information about antigene expression, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) signals and nucleus morphology. The latter serves as basis for the detection of single cells and the calculation of shape features, which are used to validate the segmentation and to reject false detections. Accurate segmentation is difficult due to varying staining intensities and aggregated cells. It requires several (meta-) parameters, which have a strong influence on the segmentation results and have to be selected carefully for each sample (or group of similar samples) by user interactions. Because our method is designed for clinicians and biologists, who may have only limited image processing background, an interactive parameter selection step allows the implicit tuning of parameter values. With this simple but intuitive method, segmentation results with high precision for a large number of cells can be achieved by minimal user interaction. The strategy was validated on handsegmented datasets of three neuroblastoma cell lines.

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Florian Kromp, Sabine Taschner-Mandl, Magdalena Schwarz, Johanna Blaha, Tamara Weiss, Peter F. Ambros, and Michael Reiter "Semi-automated segmentation of neuroblastoma nuclei using the gradient energy tensor: a user driven approach", Proc. SPIE 9445, Seventh International Conference on Machine Vision (ICMV 2014), 94451K (14 February 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2181227

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