Active mask segmentation of fluorescence microscope images

  • Authors:

  • Gowri Srinivasa;Matthew C. Fickus;Yusong Guo;Adam D. Linstedt;Jelena Kovačevic

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Information Science and Engineering and Center for Pattern Recognition, PES School of Engineering, Bangalore, India;Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH;Department of Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Department of Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Center for Bioimage Informatics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Image Processing
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

We propose a new active mask algorithm for the segmentation of fluorescence microscope images of punctate patterns. It combines the (a) flexibility offered by active-contour methods, (b) speed offered by multiresolution methods, (c) smoothing offered by multiscale methods, and (d) statistical modeling offered by region-growing methods into a fast and accurate segmentation tool. The framework moves from the idea of the "contour" to that of "inside and outside," or masks, allowing for easy multidimensional segmentation. It adapts to the topology of the image through the use of multiple masks. The algorithm is almost invariant under initialization, allowing for random initialization, and uses a few easily tunable parameters. Experiments show that the active mask algorithm matches the ground truth well and outperforms the algorithm widely used in fluorescence microscopy, seeded watershed, both qualitatively, as well as quantitatively.