Smart markers for watershed-based cell segmentation
Author
Koyuncu, Can Fahrettin
Advisor
Demir, Çiğdem Gündüz
Date
2012Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
Automated cell imaging systems facilitate fast and reliable analysis of biological
events at the cellular level. In these systems, the first step is usually cell segmentation
that greatly affects the success of the subsequent system steps. On the
other hand, similar to other image segmentation problems, cell segmentation is
an ill-posed problem that typically necessitates the use of domain specific knowledge
to obtain successful segmentations even by human subjects. The approaches
that can incorporate this knowledge into their segmentation algorithms have a
potential to greatly improve the segmentation results.
In this study, we propose a new approach for the effective segmentation of
live cells from phase-contrast microscopy. This approach introduces a new set
of “smart markers” for a marker-controlled watershed algorithm, for which the
identification of its markers is critical. The proposed approach relies on using
domain specific knowledge, in the form of visual characteristics of the cells, to
define the markers. We evaluate our approach on a total of 1954 cells. The
experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is quite effective
in identifying better markers compared to its counterparts. This will in turn
be effective in improving the segmentation performance of a marker-controlled
watershed algorithm.
Keywords
Marker-controlled watershedsLive cell segmentation
Phase contrast microscopy images
Cell lines