An automatic algorithm for the segmentation and morphological analysis of microvessels in immunostained histological tumour sections.
regionGrowingCells is a matlab programme that loads images that have been stained for CD31 and applies an image-processing algorithm for the segmentation and morphological analysis algorithm for the analysis of microvessels from CD31 immunostained histological tumour sections. The algorithm exploited the distinctive hues of stained vascular endothelial cells, cell nuclei and background, which provided the seeds for a region-growing algorithm in the 3D Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV) colour model. The segmented objects were post-processed with three morphological tasks: joining separate objects that were likely to belong to a single vessel, closing objects that had a narrow gap around their periphery, and splitting objects with multiple lumens into individual vessels.
Full description in the paper:
C.C. Reyes-Aldasoro, L Williams, S Akerman, C Kanthou and G. M. Tozer, "An automatic algorithm for the segmentation and morphological analysis of microvessels in immunostained histological tumour sections", Journal of Microscopy, Volume 242, Issue 3, pages 262–278, June 2011.