Title :
3-D axon structure extraction and analysis in confocal fluorescence microscopy images
Author :
Zhang, Yong ; Zhou, Xiaobo ; Lu, Ju ; Lichtman, Jeff ; Adjeroh, Donald ; Wong, Stephen T C
Author_Institution :
Weill Cornell Med. Coll., Houston
Abstract :
In this paper, we propose a highly automated 3D centerline extraction tool to assist 3D microscopy image analysis to extract morphological features of the neuronal structures. For this project, the most difficult part is that, some axons are overlapping to each other that the boundaries distinguishing them are hardly visible. Our approach combines 3D Dynamic Programming (DP) technique and marker controlled watershed algorithm to solve this problem. The approach consists of tracking and updating along the navigation directions of multiple axons simultaneously. The experimental results show that, the proposed method can rapidly and accurately extract multiple axon centerlines and can handle complicated axon structures such as cross-over sections and overlapping objects.
Keywords :
biomedical optical imaging; dynamic programming; feature extraction; fluorescence; image segmentation; medical image processing; neurophysiology; optical microscopy; 3-D axon structure extraction; 3-D centerline extraction; 3-D dynamic programming; confocal fluorescence microscopy images; marker controlled watershed algorithm; morphological feature extraction; neuronal structures; Data mining; Engine cylinders; Fluorescence; Image analysis; Image reconstruction; Image segmentation; Microscopy; Nerve fibers; Neurons; Software tools;
Conference_Titel :
Life Science Systems and Applications Workshop, 2007. LISA 2007. IEEE/NIH
Conference_Location :
Bethesda, MD
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-1813-8
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-4244-1813-8
DOI :
10.1109/LSSA.2007.4400929