Biomedical Image Processing in the Study of Living Cells

Acknowledgement I wish to thank my three supervisors for their support and encouragement during the PhD project. Their complementary background has been very useful in the process. My main supervisor , Hans-Hermann Gerdes, has always encouraged me and believed in my skills and also shown deep and honest fascination for the potential of image processing, which has been particularly important for my own motivation. Arvid Lundervold has during the PhD project been a constant source of encouragement by bridging the medical profession with image processing, and also through his enthusiasm for mathematics. I wish to thank my external supervisor, Xue-Cheng Tai, for numerous interesting discussions on mathematics and for keeping my mathematical skills alive in my daily medical environment. He has been very supportive, understanding and positive to my work at all stages. In the future I hope to continue the common work and further strengthen the relation with all three supervisors. I deeply appreciate the work of Roland Kauf-mann and his strong and painful efforts to keep my computer well functioning, and also Frode Meland for reading the thesis and for giving constructive and precise feedback promoting further development of the text. I also want to thank my collegues for a very positive collaboration and hopefully mutual benefits in professional discussions. I have enjoyed the close collaboration to Steffen Gurke and Nickolay Bukhoresthliev who have pushed the limits for applied image processing. I am also grateful to Knut Teigen and the sofa he bought. It has been frequently used. Furthermore, I want to thank the rest of my friends for changing my focus towards leisure and enjoyable activities outside work. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family, and in particular my parents, for their everlasting and overwhelming support at all times.