A refined circular template matching method for classification of human cytomegalovirus capsids in TEM images

An automatic image analysis method for describing, segmenting, and classifying human cytomegalovirus capsids in transmission electron micrograph (TEM) images of host cell nuclei has been developed. Three stages of the capsid assembly process in the host cell nucleus have been investigated. Each class is described by a radial density profile, which is the average grey-level at each radial distance from the center. A template, constructed from the profile, is used to find possible capsid locations by correlation based matching. The matching results are further refined by size and distortion analysis of each possible capsid, resulting in a final segmentation and classification.