Authors:
Alessandro Giusti
1
;
Giorgio Corani
1
;
Luca Gambardella
2
;
Cristina Magli
3
and
Luca Gianaroli
4
Affiliations:
1
SUPSI and University of Lugano, Switzerland
;
2
SUPSI and University of Lugan, Switzerland
;
3
International Institute for Reproductive Medicine, Switzerland
;
4
INFERGEN, Switzerland
Keyword(s):
In vitro fertilization, Microscopy, Phase contrast, Hoffmann modulation contrast, Segmentation, Contouring, Autofocus.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications and Services
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Biomedical Signal Processing
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Data Manipulation
;
Health Engineering and Technology Applications
;
Human-Computer Interaction
;
Medical Image Detection, Acquisition, Analysis and Processing
;
Methodologies and Methods
;
Neurocomputing
;
Neurotechnology, Electronics and Informatics
;
Pattern Recognition
;
Physiological Computing Systems
;
Sensor Networks
;
Soft Computing
Abstract:
Observation of ovocytes and zygotes plays an important role in In Vitro Fertilization procedures, and is usually perfomed by means of a microscope equipped with Hoffman Modulation Contrast optics, which produces images with a complex, side-lit, 3D-like appearance.
Our algorithm operates on a Z-stack of such images taken at different focal planes, and simultaneously identifies: a) a repeatable, meaningful focal plane corresponding to the cell's equator line, and b) the external contour of the cell. As the cell is a thick stucture with respect to the microscope depth of field, the two problems are nontrivial and deeply related. Our algorithm is also robust to other structures, clutter and artefacts affecting the images and lying at varying focal planes. We describe implementation details, applications and experimental results of our technique.