Segmentation of thin structures in electron micrographs using orientation fields

Kristian Sandberg, Moorea Brega
2007 Journal of Structural Biology  
In this paper, we introduce a new approach for segmenting thin structures in electron micrographs. We introduce two new transforms, the Line Filter Transform (LFT) and the Orientation Filter Transform (OFT). The LFT can be viewed as an alternative to anisotropic diffusion algorithms that is particularly useful for thin structures. The OFT utilizes geometrical information about the structure by measuring correlations of local orientations in the image. By combining these methods with a contour
more » ... traction and labeling method we construct a segmentation method for thin structures in 2D images. We discuss how the method can be applied slice-by-slice to electron tomograms and illustrate the process by constructing two models of membrane structures from cellular tomograms. The suggested method has the advantage of being relatively insensitive to non-uniform contrast and high-contrast features such as ribosomes. Published by Elsevier Inc.
doi:10.1016/j.jsb.2006.09.007 pmid:17116405 fatcat:ntrx4d7gwjc6blzg45sdrcl4fa