METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AUTOMATED IMAGE ANALYSIS OF BIOLOGICAL SPECIMENS
First Claim
1. A method of focusing, comprising:
- acquiring a first electronic image of at least a portion of a slide presenting a medical sample;
varying a focus of said slide by changing a distance between said slide and a hardware that obtains the electronic image to acquire a second electronic image;
based on the acquiring and varying, fitting at least one characteristic of the first and second images to a Gaussian function;
using said fitting to select an optimum focus by positioning the slide at a specified distance relative to a peak of said Gaussian function as an estimate of a coarse focus position; and
determining a fine focus position by finding a least squares fit to a second order polynomial.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method including acquiring images of medical slides at a plurality of different focus positions, determining a position which produces a maximum value of pixel values relative to a pixel value mean, wherein said determining comprises using a pixel value mean as a coarse estimate of coarse focus position, and subsequently refining said coarse focus position to find a fine focus position, and wherein said refining comprises fitting to a polynomial, and using a specified portion of the polynomial as a fine estimate of focus position, and producing a focus control signal that is related to said maximum value to control a focus position.
117 Citations
3 Claims
-
1. A method of focusing, comprising:
-
acquiring a first electronic image of at least a portion of a slide presenting a medical sample; varying a focus of said slide by changing a distance between said slide and a hardware that obtains the electronic image to acquire a second electronic image; based on the acquiring and varying, fitting at least one characteristic of the first and second images to a Gaussian function; using said fitting to select an optimum focus by positioning the slide at a specified distance relative to a peak of said Gaussian function as an estimate of a coarse focus position; and determining a fine focus position by finding a least squares fit to a second order polynomial.
-
-
2. A method comprising;
-
acquiring images of a medical slide at a plurality of focus positions; determining a position that produces a maximum value of pixel values relative to a pixel value mean, said determining comprising using said pixel value mean as a coarse estimate of coarse focus position; refining said coarse focus position to find a fine focus position, said refining comprising fitting to a polynomial and using a specified portion of the polynomial as a fine estimate of focus position; and producing a focus control signal that is related to said maximum value to control said focus position.
-
-
3. A method for histological reconstruction to simultaneously analyze multiple fields of view, said method comprising:
-
providing a stained cellular specimen for identification of objects of interest; generating images of the cellular specimen using an optical sensing array, each of the images being smaller than the entire stained cellular specimen; digitizing each of said images to form corresponding digitized images; coupling said stored digitized images of the cellular specimen together in an order to form a composite image; and pairing the composite image of the stained slide with an immunohistochemistry slide so that analysis of the digitized images can be performed simultaneously, said analysis including processing the composite image to find objects of interest.
-
Specification