Content aware multi-focus image fusion for high-magnification blood film microscopy

Abstract

Automated digital high-magnification optical microscopy is key to accelerating biology research and improving pathology clinical pathways. High magnification objectives with large numerical apertures are usually preferred to resolve the fine structural details of biological samples, but they have a very limited depth-of-field. Depending on the thickness of the sample, analysis of specimens typically requires the acquisition of multiple images at different focal planes for each field-of-view, followed by the fusion of these planes into an extended depth-of-field image. This translates into low scanning speeds, increased storage space, and processing time not suitable for high-throughput clinical use. We introduce a novel content-aware multi-focus image fusion approach based on deep learning which extends the depth-of-field of high magnification objectives effectively. We demonstrate the method with three examples, showing that highly accurate, detailed, extended depth of field images can be obtained at a lower axial sampling rate, using 2-fold fewer focal planes than normally required.

Noise insensitive volumetric fusion method for enhanced photoacoustic microscopy

“…Multi-focus image fusion (MFIF), which is used to integrate multiple images of the same target with different focal positions into single in-focus image, [16][17][18] has shown promising prospects in addressing the narrow DoF of microscopy system recently. 19,20 Awasthi et al 21 proposed a deep learning-based model for fusing the photoacoustic images reconstructed using different algorithms to improve the quality of photoacoustic imaging. However, this model is primarily targeted at photoacoustic tomography and a large amount of data is required for training.…”

“…These methods can achieve high-resolution photoacoustic imaging with large DoF, at the expense of increased system complexity and high cost. Multi-focus image fusion (MFIF), which is used to integrate multiple images of the same target with different focal positions into single in-focus image, 16 – 18 has shown promising prospects in addressing the narrow DoF of microscopy system recently 19 , 20 . Awasthi et al 21 .…”