Quantitative tracking of tumor cells in phase-contrast microscopy exploiting halo artifact pattern

Mi-Sun Kang; Soo-Min Song; Hana Lee; Myoung-Hee Kim

doi:10.1117/12.911683

16 April 2012 Quantitative tracking of tumor cells in phase-contrast microscopy exploiting halo artifact pattern

Mi-Sun Kang, Soo-Min Song, Hana Lee, Myoung-Hee Kim

Proceedings Volume 8317, Medical Imaging 2012: Biomedical Applications in Molecular, Structural, and Functional Imaging; 83171X (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.911683
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2012, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Tumor cell morphology is closely related to its invasiveness characteristics and migratory behaviors. An invasive tumor cell has a highly irregular shape, whereas a spherical cell is non-metastatic. Thus, quantitative analysis of cell features is crucial to determine tumor malignancy or to test the efficacy of anticancer treatment. We use phase-contrast microscopy to analyze single cell morphology and to monitor its change because it enables observation of long-term activity of living cells without photobleaching and phototoxicity, which is common in other fluorescence-labeled microscopy. Despite this advantage, there are image-level drawbacks to phase-contrast microscopy, such as local light effect and contrast interference ring, among others. Thus, we first applied a local filter to compensate for non-uniform illumination. Then, we used intensity distribution information to detect the cell boundary. In phase-contrast microscopy images, the cell normally appears as a dark region surrounded by a bright halo. As the halo artifact around the cell body is minimal and has an asymmetric diffusion pattern, we calculated the cross-sectional plane that intersected the center of each cell and was orthogonal to the first principal axis. Then, we extracted the dark cell region by level set. However, a dense population of cultured cells still rendered single-cell analysis difficult. Finally, we measured roundness and size to classify tumor cells into malignant and benign groups. We validated segmentation accuracy by comparing our findings with manually obtained results.

Citation Download Citation

Mi-Sun Kang, Soo-Min Song, Hana Lee, and Myoung-Hee Kim "Quantitative tracking of tumor cells in phase-contrast microscopy exploiting halo artifact pattern", Proc. SPIE 8317, Medical Imaging 2012: Biomedical Applications in Molecular, Structural, and Functional Imaging, 83171X (16 April 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.911683

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