AN EFFICIENT SEMIAUTOMATIC ALGORITHM FOR CELL CONTOUR EXTRACTION

An interactive semi-automatic procedure for extraction of cell contours from light microscope images is presented. The user is required to specify four contour points and the algorithm determines the rest of the contour automatically. The algorithm exploits the fact that cell contours have lower grey level than their immediate surrounding and are usually very similar in shape to some piece-wise ellipses. A cost function is defined to detect the cell contours incorporating both the elliptical shape and local image intensities. The procedure is fast, reliable and well suited for routine interactive applications.