Improving active contour methods for tracking endothelial cells by the removal of low-confidence edge segments

Abstract

Previously we developed an active contour method for segmenting and tracking cells in phase-contrast microscopy images. Our method is capable of fine-grained segmentation on noisy image sequences. In this paper, we improve the active contour segmentation model to provide better accuracy, by selectively identifying areas of the contour with low confidence and removing them. The method is applied to HMEC-1 cells (human microvascular endothelial cells). The segmentation provided by the method is quantitavely compared with manually-drawn contours, showing close fit and capability to 'lock' on to cell boundaries for hundreds of frames.

A Cell Derived Active Contour (CDAC) Method for Robust Tracking in Low Frame Rate, Low Contrast Phase Microscopy - an Example: The Human hNT Astrocyte

“…The active contour method considered in this paper is the one briefly described in [37]. A brief explanation follows.…”

“…While parametric active contours (snakes) are considered an ‘older’ method [ 48 ], we will show that they still provide much value for interesting segmentation problems. The active contour method considered in this paper is the one briefly described in [ 37 ]. A brief explanation follows.…”

“…During their development, astrocytes often migrate very long distances before `settling down' in a specific neural area [ 34 ]. To study astrocyte migration, our group has initiated research on how they can be guided to artificial structures [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. In this study, we used a phase-contrast live cell imaging system with wide field of view (low magnification) to be able to track human hNT astrocytes moving over relatively long distances (up to several millimeters).…”