Segmentation of time-lapse images with focus on microscopic images of cells

Abstract

Phase contrast is a noninvasive microscopy imaging technique that is widely used in time-lapse imaging of cells. Resulting images however contain some optical artifacts, which makes automated processing by computer difficult. We developed a novel algorithm for cell segmentation. It is based on processing of time differences between images and combination of thresholding, blurring and morphological operations. We tested the algorithm on four different cell types acquired by two different microscopes. We evaluated the precision of segmentation against the manual segmentation by human operator and compared also with other methods. Our algorithm is simple, fast and shows accuracy that is comparable to manual segmentation. In addition it can correctly separate the dead from living cells. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.