Methods and apparatus to form a wavelet representation of a pathology slide having glass and tissue regions

• US 8,704,886 B2
• Filed: 10/15/2010
• Issued: 04/22/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/15/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Digital Pathco, LLC, General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: Digital Pathco, LLC, General Electric Company
• Inventors: Diamant, Idit, Dekel, Shai, Sherman, Alexander, Zuiderveld, Karel
• Primary Examiner(s): Rao, Andy
• Assistant Examiner(s): EDWARDS, TYLER B
• Application Number:
  US12/905,781
• Publication Number:
  US 20120092476A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,285 Days
• Field of Search: 382/128
• US Class Current: 348/79
• CPC Class Codes: G02B 21/367 providing an output produced by processing a plurality of individual source images, e.g. image tiling, montage, composite images, depth sectioning, image comparison
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/52 Scale-space analysis, e.g. wavelet analysis multi-scale boundary representations G06V10/42
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/695 Preprocessing, e.g. image segmentation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/132 Sampling, masking or truncation of coding units, e.g. adaptive resampling, frame skipping, frame interpolation or high-frequency transform coefficient masking
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/167 Position within a video image, e.g. region of interest [ROI]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/17 the unit being an image region, e.g. an object
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/20 using video object coding
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/63 using sub-band based transform, e.g. wavelets
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/85 using pre-processing or post-processing specially adapted for video compression

Abstract

Example methods, apparatus and articles of manufacture to form a wavelet representation of a pathology slide having glass and tissue regions are disclosed. A disclosed example method includes capturing a digital image of a pathology slide, identifying a portion of the digital image that represents a glass portion of the slide, and storing a value representing that the wavelet coefficients for the identified glass portion of the slide are unused without computing a wavelet transform for the identified glass portion.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

capturing a digital image of a pathology slide;

identifying at a first resolution a first portion of the digital image comprising a first glass portion of the pathology slide;

storing a value representing wavelet coefficients for the identified first glass portion of the pathology slide are unused without computing a wavelet transform for the identified first glass portion;

identifying at the first resolution a second portion of the digital image comprising a second glass portion of the pathology slide and a non-glass portion;

capturing a digital image of the second portion at a second resolution greater than the first resolution;

storing the value for the identified second glass portion of the pathology slide at the second resolution without computing the wavelet transform for the identified second glass portion; and

computing the wavelet transform of the non-glass portion of the digital image of the second portion to form a non-glass wavelet coefficient representing the identified non-glass portion.

2. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein capturing the digital image comprises scanning an entirety of the pathology slide at a first resolution, and the value is stored for the first portion without scanning the first portion of the pathology slide at the second resolution.

3. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the value comprises a one-bit value to identify the identified first and second glass portions as glass.

4. A method as defined in claim 1, wherein the value is stored for a first color, and further comprising storing a second value for a second color without computing the wavelet transform for the identified first and second glass portions.

5. A method as defined in claim 1, further comprising:

storing the value for a first sub-band; and

storing a second value for a second sub-band without computing the wavelet transform for the identified glass portion.

6. A method as defined in claim 1, further comprising:

identifying a third portion of the digital image at the first resolution comprising a second non-glass portion of the pathology slide;

capturing a digital image of the second non-glass portion of the pathology slide at the second resolution; and

computing a wavelet transform of the digital image of the second non-glass portion to form a non-glass wavelet coefficient representing the second non-glass portion of the pathology slide.

7. A method as defined in claim 6, further comprising quantizing the non-glass wavelet coefficient.

8. A method as defined in claim 6, further comprising compressing the non-glass wavelet coefficient.

9. A method as defined in claim 1, further comprising identifying the first glass portion or the second glass portion by comparing at least one of a minimum luminance component, a minimum red component, a minimum blue component, or a minimum green component to a threshold.

10. An apparatus comprising:

an image acquirer to capture a digital image of a pathology slide;

an acquisition controller to identify at a first resolution a first portion of the digital image comprising a first glass portion of the pathology slide and a second portion of the digital image comprising a second glass portion of the pathology slide and a non-glass portion, the image acquirer to capture a digital image of the second portion at a second resolution greater than the first resolution; and

a coefficient computation module to;

store an indicator indicating that no wavelet coefficients for the identified first glass portion of the pathology slide were stored without computing a wavelet transform for the identified first glass portion of the pathology slide,

store the indicator for the identified second glass portion of the pathology slide at the second resolution without computing the wavelet transform for the identified second portion; and

compute the wavelet transform of the non-glass portion of the digital image of the second portion to form a non-glass wavelet coefficient representing the identified non-glass portion.

11. An apparatus as defined in claim 10, wherein the indicator comprises a one-bit value to identify the identified first and second glass portions as glass.

12. An apparatus as defined in claim 10, wherein the coefficient computation module is to store the indicator for a first color, and store a second indicator for a second color without computing the wavelet transform for the identified first and second glass portions.

13. An apparatus as defined in claim 10, wherein the acquisition controller is to identify a third portion of the digital image at the first resolution comprising a second non-glass portion of the pathology slide;

the image acquirer is to capture a digital image of the second non-glass portion of the pathology slide at the second resolution; and

the coefficient computation module is to compute a wavelet transform of the digital image of the second non-glass portion to form a non-glass wavelet coefficient representing the second non-glass portion of the pathology slide.

14. An apparatus as defined in claim 13, further comprising a compression module to quantize the non-glass wavelet coefficient.

15. An apparatus as defined in claim 13, further a compression module to compress the non-glass wavelet coefficient.

16. An apparatus as defined in claim 10, wherein the image acquirer is further to identify the first glass portion or the second glass portion by comparing at least one of a minimum luminance component, a minimum red component, a minimum blue component, or a minimum green component to a threshold.

17. A tangible article of manufacture storing machine-readable instructions that, when executed, cause a machine to at least:

capture a digital image of a pathology slide;

identify at a first resolution a first portion of the digital image comprising a first glass portion of the pathology slide;

store a flag for the identified first glass portion of the pathology slide without computing a wavelet transform for the identified glass portion, the flag representing that a wavelet coefficient block associated with the identified glass portion is empty;

identify at the first resolution a second portion of the digital image comprising a second glass portion of the pathology slide and a non-glass portion;

capture a digital image of the second portion at a second resolution greater than the first resolution;

store the flag for the identified second glass portion of the pathology slide at the second resolution without computing the wavelet transform for the identified second glass portion; and

compute the wavelet transform of the of the non-glass portion digital image of the second portion to form a non-glass wavelet coefficient representing the identified non-glass portion.

18. An article of manufacture as defined in claim 17, wherein the flag comprises a one-bit value to identify the identified first and second glass portions as glass.

19. An article of manufacture as defined in claim 17, wherein the machine-readable instructions, when executed, cause the machine to:

store the flag for a first sub-band coefficient; and

store a second flag for a second sub-band without computing the wavelet transform.

20. An article of manufacture as defined in claim 17, wherein the machine-readable instructions, when executed, cause the machine to:

identify a third portion of the digital image at the first resolution comprising a second non-glass portion of the pathology slide;

capture a digital image of the second non-glass portion of the pathology slide at the second resolution; and

compute a wavelet transform of the digital image of the second non-glass portion to form a non-glass wavelet coefficient representing the second non-glass portion of the pathology slide.