PUBLICATION

Detection of blob objects in microscopic zebrafish images based on gradient vector diffusion

Authors
Li, G., Liu, T., Nie, J., Guo, L., Malicki, J., Mara, A., Holley, S.A., Xia, W., and Wong, S.T.
ID
ZDB-PUB-070806-15
Date
2007
Source
Cytometry. Part A : the journal of the International Society for Analytical Cytology   71(10): 835-845 (Journal)
Registered Authors
Holley, Scott, Liu, Tianming, Malicki, Jarema, Wong, Stephen T.C., Xia, Weiming
Keywords
zebrafish, image-based phenotyping, blob object detection, Alzheimer's disease, retina, somitogenesis, image analysis, elastic deformable model, gradient vector diffusion
MeSH Terms
  • Animals
  • Cell Nucleus/metabolism
  • Cell Shape
  • Cell Size
  • Diffusion
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Light
  • Mesoderm/cytology
  • Microscopy/methods*
  • Neurons, Afferent/cytology
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Retina/cytology
  • Zebrafish*/embryology
PubMed
17654652 Full text @ Cytometry A
Abstract
The zebrafish has become an important vertebrate animal model for the study of developmental biology, functional genomics, and disease mechanisms. It is also being used for drug discovery. Computerized detection of blob objects has been one of the important tasks in quantitative phenotyping of zebrafish. We present a new automated method that is able to detect blob objects, such as nuclei or cells in microscopic zebrafish images. This method is composed of three key steps. The first step is to produce a diffused gradient vector field by a physical elastic deformable model. In the second step, the flux image is computed on the diffused gradient vector field. The third step performs thresholding and nonmaximum suppression based on the flux image. We report the validation and experimental results of this method using zebrafish image datasets from three independent research labs. Both sensitivity and specificity of this method are over 90%. This method is able to differentiate closely juxtaposed or connected blob objects, with high sensitivity and specificity in different situations. It is characterized by a good, consistent performance in blob object detection.
Genes / Markers
Figures
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Antibodies
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping