Apparatus for automated identification of cell groupings on a biological specimen
First Claim
1. An automated cell group recognizer for locating groups of cells on a biological specimen comprising:
- (a) an automated microscope for acquiring an image representation of a portion of the biological specimen wherein the automated microscope has an image representation output, wherein the image representation is taken at a single focus position;
(b) an image feature extractor coupled to the automated microscope to receive the image representation output, wherein the image feature extractor has an image feature vector output;
(c) a pixel intensity averager connected to the image representation output wherein, the pixel intensity averager has an average pixel output for pixels having an intensity greater than a first predetermined intensity;
(d) a small dark averager connected to the image representation output having a small dark averager output;
(e) a high pixel counter connected to the image representation to count a number of pixels greater than a second predetermined intensity wherein the high pixel counter has a count output; and
(f) a classifier coupled to the image feature vector output, wherein the classifier has an output indicative of a likelihood that a predetermined part of the biological specimen contains a group of cells wherein the group of cells includes a cellular aggregate, and wherein the classifier also has a likelihood output.
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Abstract
The detection of cellular aggregates within cytologic samples. An image analysis system with an image gathering system includes a camera, a motion controller, an illumination system and an interface obtains images of cell groupings. The image gathering system is constructed for gathering image data of a specimen mounted on a slide and is coupled to a data processing system. Image data is transferred from the image gathering system to the data processing system. The data processing system obtains objects of interest. A four step process finds cellular aggregates. The first step is acquisition of an image for analysis. The second step is extraction of image features. The third step is classification of the image to determine if any potential cellular aggregates may exist in the image. The fourth step is segmentation of objects which includes the substeps of detecting and locating potential cellular aggregates.
49 Citations
22 Claims
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1. An automated cell group recognizer for locating groups of cells on a biological specimen comprising:
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(a) an automated microscope for acquiring an image representation of a portion of the biological specimen wherein the automated microscope has an image representation output, wherein the image representation is taken at a single focus position; (b) an image feature extractor coupled to the automated microscope to receive the image representation output, wherein the image feature extractor has an image feature vector output; (c) a pixel intensity averager connected to the image representation output wherein, the pixel intensity averager has an average pixel output for pixels having an intensity greater than a first predetermined intensity; (d) a small dark averager connected to the image representation output having a small dark averager output; (e) a high pixel counter connected to the image representation to count a number of pixels greater than a second predetermined intensity wherein the high pixel counter has a count output; and (f) a classifier coupled to the image feature vector output, wherein the classifier has an output indicative of a likelihood that a predetermined part of the biological specimen contains a group of cells wherein the group of cells includes a cellular aggregate, and wherein the classifier also has a likelihood output. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. An automated cell group recognizer for locating groups of cells on a biological specimen comprising:
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(a) an automated microscope for acquiring an image representation of a portion of the biological specimen wherein the automated microscope has an image representation output, wherein the image representation is taken at a single focus position; (b) an image feature extractor coupled to the automated microscope to receive the image representation, wherein the image feature extractor has an image feature vector output; (c) a classifier coupled to the image feature vector output, wherein the classifier has an output indicative of a likelihood that a predetermined part of the biological specimen contains a group of cells wherein the group of cells includes a cellular aggregate, and wherein the classifier also has a likelihood output; and (d) a computer processor coupled to the image representation output, where the image representation output includes an original image, and where the computer processor computes a small dark average according to the following equation;
where NPixels is the number of pixels in an image, AllPixels indicates that the ##EQU5## summation covers all pixels in the image, Iorg is the original image, and ⊕
is the morphological dilation operator.
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19. An automated cell group recognizer for locating groups of cells on a biological specimen comprising:
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(a) an automated microscope for acquiring an image representation of a portion of the biological specimen wherein the automated microscope has an image representation output wherein the image representation is taken at a single focus position; (b) an image feature extractor coupled to the automated microscope to receive the image representation, wherein the image feature extractor has an image feature vector output; (c) a classifier coupled to the image feature vector output wherein the classifier has an output indicative of a likelihood that a predetermined part of the biological specimen contains a group of cells wherein the group of cells includes a cellular aggregate, and wherein the classifier also has a likelihood output; and (d) a small dark averager/high pixel comparator connected to the image representation output, where the image representation output includes an original image, wherein the small dark averager/high pixel comparator further comprises a processor where image representation output is used to compute a small dark average by the following equation;
##EQU6## where NPixels is the number of pixels in an image, AllPixels indicates that the summation covers all pixels in the image, Iorg is the original image, and ⊕
is the morphological dilation operator.
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20. A method for automated cell group recognition for locating groups of cells on a biological specimen comprising the steps of:
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(a) acquiring an image representation of a portion of the biological specimen, wherein the image representation is taken at a single focus position; (b) image feature extracting an image feature vector from the image representation; (c) pixel intensity averaging the image representation to generate an average pixel output for pixels having an intensity greater than a first predetermined intensity; (d) small dark averaging the image representation to generate a small dark average output; (e) high pixel counting the image representation to count a number of pixels greater than a second predetermined intensity; and (f) classifying the image feature vector to generate a likelihood that a predetermined part of the biological specimen contains a group of cells wherein the group of cells includes a cellular aggregate. - View Dependent Claims (21)
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22. An image segmenting apparatus for segmenting an image, wherein the image is taken at a single focus position, the image segmenting apparatus comprising:
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(a) a large object remover to filter objects greater than a first predetermined size from the image having a first image output; (b) a small object remover connected to the first image output to filter objects small than a second predetermined size having a second image output; (c) an image thresholder connected to the second image output to locate a nuclei-like object having third image output; (d) an object refiner to fill small holes and remove jagged edges from the third image output having a fourth image output; and (e) a clusterer connected to the fourth image output for grouping nuclei that are in a cellular aggregate and for eliminating nuclei that are not in the cellular aggregate.
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Specification