IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNIQUES USED IN MICROSCOPIC IMAGE SEGMENTATION BY CRISTIAN SMOCHINĂ∗, PAUL HERGHELEGIU and VASILE MANTA

The objective of semantic segmentation in microscopic images is to extract the cellular, nuclear or tissue components. This problem is challenging due to the large variations of features of these components (size, shape, orientation or texture). In this paper we present an overview of the proposed segmentation techniques for microscopic images. This is not a comprehensive study, but rather an analysis of the most used image processing methods in this particular domain. The existing techniques are grouped by their application in one of the following pathological field: cytology vs. histology. Beside a rough description of each method, we present a useful statistic and discussion about the frequency of the most used image processing methods in the problem of microscopic image segmentation. This analysis is helpful for a better use of existing method and for improving their performance as well as for designing new ones.