Skip to main content
Log in

Segmentation of microorganism in complex environments

  • Applied Problems
  • Published:
Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper, we tackle the problem of finding microorganisms in bright field microscopy images, which is an important and challenging step in various tasks, like classifying soil textures. Apart from bacteria or fungi, these images can contain impurities such as sand particles, which increase the difficulty of microbe detection. Following a semantic segmentation approach, where a label is inferred for each pixel, we achieve encouraging classification results on a database containing five different types of microbes. We review and evaluate multiple techniques including segment classification, conditional random field models, and level set approaches.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. X. Wu and S. K. Shah, “A bottom-up and top-down model for cell segmentation using multispectral data,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Biomedical Imaging (Rotterdam, 2010), pp. 592–595.

    Google Scholar 

  2. A. Gelas, K. Mosaliganti, A. Gouaillard, L. Souhait, R. Noche, N. Obholzer, and S. G. Megason, “Variational level-set with gaussian shape model for cell segmentation,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing (Cairo, 2009), pp. 1089–1092.

    Google Scholar 

  3. A. Pinidiyaarachchi and C. Wöhlby, “Seeded water-sheds for combined segmentation and tracking of cells,” in Proc. Int. Conf. on Image Analysis and Processing (Genoa, 2005), pp. 336–343.

    Google Scholar 

  4. M. Krause, P. Rösch, B. Radt, and J. Popp, “Localizing and identifying living bacteria in an abiotic environment by a combination of raman and fluorescence microscopy,” Anal. Chem. 80, 8568–8575 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. G. Csurka and F. Perronnin, “A simple high performance approach to semantic segmentation,” in Proc. British Machine Vision Conf. (Leeds, 2008), pp. 213–222.

    Google Scholar 

  6. B. Fröhlich, E. Rodner, and J. Denzler, “A fast approach for pixelwise labeling of facade images,” in Proc. Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (San Francisco, 2010), Vols. 7, 8, pp. 3029–3032.

    Google Scholar 

  7. D. Comaniciu and P. Meer, “Mean shift: A robust approach toward feature space analysis,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 24(5), 603–619 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Y. Boykov, O. Veksler, and R. Zabih, “Fast approximate energy minimization via graph cuts,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 23, 1222–1239 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. M. Kass, A. Witkin, and D. Terzopoulus, “Snakes: active contour models,” Int. J. Comput. Vision 1(4), 321–331 (1987).

    Google Scholar 

  10. S. Osher and J. A. Sethian, “Fronts propagating with curvature-dependent speed: algorithms based on hamilton-jacobi formulations,” J. Comput. Phys. 79, 12–49 (1988).

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  11. D. Mumford and J. Shah, “Optimal approximation by piecewise smooth functions and associated variational problems,” Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 42, pp. 557–685 (1989).

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  12. T. F. Chan and L. A. Vese, “Active contours without edges,” IEEE Trans. Image Processing 10, 266–277 (2001).

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. D. Cremers, M. Rousson, and R. Deriche, “A review of statistical approaches to level set segmentation: Integrating color, texture, motion, and shape,” Int. J. Comput. Vision 72, 195–215 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. V. Caselles, R. Kimmel, and G. Sapiro, “Geodesic active contours,” Int. J. Comput. Vision 22, 61–79 (1997). http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=250488.250495

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. C. Li, C. Xu, C. Gui, and M. D. Fox, “Distance regularized level set evolution and its application to image segmentation,” IEEE Trans. Image Processing 19, 3243–3254 (2010).

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. B. Fröhlich, E. Rodner, M. Kemmler, and J. Denzler, “Efficient Gaussian process classification using random decision forests,” Pattern Recogn. Image Anal. 21, 184–187 (2011). doi: 10.1134/S1054661811020337.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. M. Schmidt, UGM: A matlab toolbox for probabilistic undirected graphical models (2007). http://www.di.ens.fr/mschmidt/Software/UGM.html

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to M. Kemmler.

Additional information

The article is published in the original.

Michael Kemmler, born January 31, 1983, received the Diploma degree in Computer Science with honors in 2009 from the Friedlich Schiller University of Jena, Germany. As a PhD student of the Jena Graduate School for Microbial Communication, he is currently pursuing his studies under supervision of Joachim Denzler at the Chair for Computer Vision, University of Jena. His research interests are in the area of machine learning, object recognition and bioinformatics, including kernel methods, visual image and scene classification as well as bacterial classification.

Björn Fröhlich, born September 10, 1984, earned the degree “Diplom-Informatiker” from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in the year 2009. He is currently a holder of a scholarship in the Graduate School on Image Processing and Image Interpretation from the Free State of Thuringia (Germany) and a PhD student at the chair of Computer Vision, Institute of Computer Science, Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. Research interests are focused on object recognition and image segmentation.

Erik Rodner, born May 22, 1983 earned the Diploma degree in Computer Science with honours in 2007 from the University of Jena, Germany. He pursued and received his Ph. D. in 2011 with summa cum laude for his work on learning with few examples, which was done under supervision of Joachim Denzler at the computer vision research group of the University of Jena. Erik is currently continuing his research as a postdoctoral researcher. His research interests include kernel methods, visual object discovery, rare animals, and scene understanding.

Joachim Denzler, born April 16, 1967, earned the degrees “DiplomInformatiker”, “Dr.-Ing.,” and “Habilitation” from the University of Erlangen in the years 1992, 1997, and 2003, respectively. Currently, he holds a position of full professor for computer science and is head of the Chair for Computer Vision, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena. His research interests comprise active computer vision, object recognition and tracking, 3D reconstruction, and plenoptic modeling, as well as computer vision for autonomous systems. He is author and coauthor of over 90 journal papers and technical articles. He is a member of the IEEE, IEEE computer society, DAGM, and GI. For his work on object tracking, plenoptic modeling, and active object recognition and state estimation, he was awarded the DAGM best aper awards in 1996, 1999, and 2001, respectively.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Kemmler, M., Fröhlich, B., Rodner, E. et al. Segmentation of microorganism in complex environments. Pattern Recognit. Image Anal. 23, 512–517 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1054661813040056

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1054661813040056

Keywords

Navigation