Nucleus and cytoplast contour detector of cervical smear image

Abstract

This paper develops a cytoplast and nucleus contour (CNC) detector to sever the nucleus and cytoplast from a cervical smear image. This paper proposes the bi-group enhancer to make a clear-cut separation for the pixels laid between two objects, and the maximal color difference (MCD) method to draw the aptest nucleus contour. The CNC detector adopts a median filter to sweep off noises, the bi-group enhancer to suppress the noises and brighten the object contours, the K-mean algorithm to discern the cytoplast from the background, and the MCD method to extract the nucleus contour. The experimental results show that the CNC detector can give an impressive performance. Besides cervical smear images, these proposed techniques can be utilized in segmenting objects from other images. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.