Fast Segmentation of Cervical Cells by Using Spectral Imaging Analysis Techniques

Abstract

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women worldwide. Early detection of cervical cancer is very important for successful treatment and increasing survival. We report a spectral imaging microscopic system for Papanicolaou smear analysis for early detection of cervical cancer. Different from traditional color imaging method, we use spectral imaging techniques for image acquisition, which can simultaneously record spectral and spatial information of a sample. In this paper, the imaging instrument construction and spectral image acquisition method is introduced. In the image segmentation process, an effective algorithm using spectral ratio method is applied for cell nuclei detection, which can easily detect the nuclei and diminish the influence of the cytoplasm overlap. Results showed that our segmentation is robust and precise. In addition to this, the segmentation speed is very high.