Automatic extraction of cell nuclei from H&E-stained histopathological images.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Yi, Faliu Huang, Junzhou Yang, Lin Xie, Yang Xiao, Guanghua
Abstract	Abstract.Extraction of cell nuclei from hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained histopathological images is an essential preprocessing step in computerized image analysis for disease detection, diagnosis, and prognosis. We present an automated cell nuclei segmentation approach that works with H&E-stained images. A color deconvolution algorithm was first applied to the image to get the hematoxylin channel. Using a morphological operation and thresholding technique on the hematoxylin channel image, candidate target nuclei and background regions were detected, which were then used as markers for a marker-controlled watershed transform segmentation algorithm. Moreover, postprocessing was conducted to split the touching nuclei. For each segmented region from the previous steps, the regional maximum value positions were identified as potential nuclei centers. These maximum values were further grouped into k-clusters, and the locations within each cluster were connected with the minimum spanning tree technique. Then, these connected positions were utilized as new markers for a watershed segmentation approach. The final number of nuclei at each region was determined by minimizing an objective function that iterated all of the possible k-values. The proposed method was applied to the pathological images of the tumor tissues from The Cancer Genome Atlas study. Experimental results show that the proposed method can lead to promising results in terms of segmentation accuracy and separation of touching nuclei.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC5478972&blobtype=pdf
Page Count	12
ISSN	23294302
Journal	Journal of Medical Imaging [J Med Imaging (Bellingham)]
Volume Number	4
PubMed Central reference number	PMC5478972
Issue Number	2
PubMed reference number	28653017
e-ISSN	23294310
DOI	10.1117/1.jmi.4.2.027502
Language	English
Publisher	Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers
Publisher Date	2017-04-01
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI. © The Authors.
Subject Keyword	digital pathology hematoxylin and eosin-stained image cell nuclei extraction watershed transform color deconvolution image analysis
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging