Exploring HSI imagery for overlapped chromosomes segmentation

The segmentation of overlapping chromosomes in metaphase images is a longstanding challenge in cytogenetics, where limited spectral contrast in conventional RGB imaging. In this study, we explore hyperspectral imaging (HSI) as a promising alternative modality to enhance segmentation accuracy by exploiting information from a narrow band of the spectrum. To evaluate the benefit of spectral data, we acquired and annotated a dedicated dataset of overlapping chromosomes, using a hyperspectral microscopy system. Multiple segmentation baseline models were trained and benchmarked on both RGB and HSI data. Experimental results show that HSI-based models consistently outperform RGB-based counterparts, achieving up to 92% Dice score. These findings underline the potential of HSI for improving cytogenetic image analysis and provide a new benchmark dataset for future research in spectral segmentation.