AN EFFICIENT SEMIAUTOMATIC ALGORITHM FOR CELL CONTOUR EXTRACTION

An interactive semi-automatic procedure for extraction of cell contour s from light microscope images is presented. The user is required to s pecify four contour points and the algorithm determines the rest of th e contour automatically. The algorithm exploits the fact that cell con tours have lower grey level than their immediate surrounding and are u sually very similar in shape to some piece-wise ellipses. A cost funct ion is defined to detect the cell contours incorporating both the elli ptical shape and local image intensities. The procedure is fast, relia ble and well suited for routine interactive applications.