Template-driven segmentation of confocal microscopy images

High quality 3D visualization of anatomic structures is necessary for many applications. The anatomic structures first need to be segmented. A variety of segmentation algorithms have been developed for this purpose. For confocal microscopy images, the noise introduced during the specimen preparation process, such as the procedure of penetration or staining, may cause images to be of low contrast in some regions. This property will make segmentation difficult. Also, the segmented structures may have rugged surfaces in 3D visualization. In this paper, we present a hybrid method that is suitable for segmentation of confocal microscopy images. A rough segmentation result is obtained from the atlas-based segmentation via affine registration. The boundaries of the segmentation result are close to the object boundaries, and are regarded as the initial contours of the active contour models. After convergence of the snake algorithm, the resulting contours in regions of low contrast are locally refined by parametric bicubic surfaces to alleviate the problem of incorrect convergence. The proposed method increases the accuracy of the snake algorithm because of better initial contours. Besides, it can provide smoother segmented results in 3D visualization.