Application to Quantify Fetal Lung Branching on Rat Explants

Pedro L. Rodrigues, Sara Granja, António Moreira, Nuno Rodrigues, João L. Vilaça

2013

Abstract

Recently, regulating mechanisms of branching morphogenesis of fetal lung rat explants have been an essential tool for molecular research. The development of accurate and reliable segmentation techniques may be essential to improve research outcomes. This work presents an image processing method to measure the perimeter and area of lung branches on fetal rat explants. The algorithm starts by reducing the noise corrupting the image with a pre-processing stage. The outcome is input to a watershed operation that automatically segments the image into primitive regions. Then, an image pixel is selected within the lung explant epithelial, allowing a region growing between neighbouring watershed regions. This growing process is controlled by a statistical distribution of each region. When compared with manual segmentation, the results show the same tendency for lung development. High similarities were harder to obtain in the last two days of culture, due to the increased number of peripheral airway buds and complexity of lung architecture. However, using semiautomatic measurements, the standard deviation was lower and the results between independent researchers were more coherent.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

L. Rodrigues P., Granja S., Moreira A., Rodrigues N. and L. Vilaça J. (2013). Application to Quantify Fetal Lung Branching on Rat Explants . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications - Volume 2: VISAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2013) ISBN 978-989-8565-48-8, pages 67-70. DOI: 10.5220/0004220900670070

in Bibtex Style

@conference{visapp13,
author={Pedro L. Rodrigues and Sara Granja and António Moreira and Nuno Rodrigues and João L. Vilaça},
title={Application to Quantify Fetal Lung Branching on Rat Explants},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications - Volume 2: VISAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2013)},
year={2013},
pages={67-70},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004220900670070},
isbn={978-989-8565-48-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications - Volume 2: VISAPP, (VISIGRAPP 2013)
TI - Application to Quantify Fetal Lung Branching on Rat Explants
SN - 978-989-8565-48-8
AU - L. Rodrigues P.
AU - Granja S.
AU - Moreira A.
AU - Rodrigues N.
AU - L. Vilaça J.
PY - 2013
SP - 67
EP - 70
DO - 10.5220/0004220900670070