Segmentation and Modelling of the Nuclear Envelope of HeLa Cells Imaged with Serial Block Face Scanning Electron Microscopy

This paper describes an unsupervised algorithm, which segments the nuclear envelope of HeLa cells imaged by Serial Block Face Scanning Electron Microscopy. The algorithm exploits the variations of pixel intensity in different cellular regions by calculating edges, which are then used to generate superpixels. The superpixels are morphologically processed and those that correspond to the nuclear region are selected through the analysis of size, position, and correspondence with regions detected in neighbouring slices. The nuclear envelope is segmented from the nuclear region. The three-dimensional segmented nuclear envelope is then modelled against a spheroid to create a two-dimensional (2D) surface. The 2D surface summarises the complex 3D shape of the nuclear envelope and allows the extraction of metrics that may be relevant to characterise the nature of cells. The algorithm was developed and validated on a single cell and tested in six separate cells, each with 300 slices of 2000 × 2000 pixels. Ground truth was available for two of these cells, i.e., 600 hand-segmented slices. The accuracy of the algorithm was evaluated with two similarity metrics: Jaccard Similarity Index and Mean Hausdorff distance. Jaccard values of the first/second segmentation were 93%/90% for the whole cell, and 98%/94% between slices 75 and 225, as the central slices of the nucleus are more regular than those on the extremes. Mean Hausdorff distances were 9/17 pixels for the whole cells and 4/13 pixels for central slices. One slice was processed in approximately 8 s and a whole cell in 40 min. The algorithm outperformed active contours in both accuracy and time.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2019

Erschienen:

2019

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:5

Enthalten in:

Journal of imaging - 5(2019), 9 vom: 12. Sept.

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Karabağ, Cefa [VerfasserIn]
Jones, Martin L [VerfasserIn]
Peddie, Christopher J [VerfasserIn]
Weston, Anne E [VerfasserIn]
Collinson, Lucy M [VerfasserIn]
Reyes-Aldasoro, Constantino Carlos [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Active contours
Hausdorff distance
HeLa cells
Jaccard index
Journal Article
Segmentation

Anmerkungen:

Date Revised 07.11.2023

published: Electronic

Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE

doi:

10.3390/jimaging5090075

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM330034340