Fully-Automated Analysis of Muscle Fiber Images with Combined Region and Edge-Based Active Contours

This paper presents a new approach to automated muscle fiber analysis based on segmenting myofibers with combined region and edge based active contours. It provides reliable and fully-automated processing, thus, enabling time-saving batch processing of the entire biopsy sample stemming from routinely HE-stained cryostat sections. The method combines color, texture, and edge cues in a level set based active contour model succeeded by a refinement with morphological filters. False-positive segmentations as compared to former methods are minimized. A quantitative comparison between manual and automated analysis of muscle fibers images did not reveal any significant differences. In Proc. Bildverarbeitung für die Medizin, H. Handels, J. Ehrhardt, A. Horsch, H.P. Meinzer, and T. Tolxdorff (Eds.), pp. 86-90, Springer, Mar. 2006 c © Springer-Verlag Berlin