Environmental Research Institute of Michigan

Erim International, Inc.

Frim International, Inc.

Robert C Vogt, Iii

John M Trenkle

The extraction and pre-cueing of axon fibers and clusters is performed on transmission electron micrograph (TEM) image mosaics to reduce neuroanatomist workload. Given a multiplicity of myelin-sheathed axon fibers in a cross-sectional image containing many such fibers, the inventive method uses these grey-level operators to effectively identify co-occurrences of the axon fibers and their myelin sheaths and output a result representative of these co-occurrences. The co-occurrences may then be sorted in terms of their geometry to identify groups of fibers indicative of axon clusters. Specifically, a grey-level opening and conditional dilation is performed on the image to obtain a first residue representative of potential axons A grey-level closing and conditional erosion of the first opening image is then performed to obtain a second residue representative of potential axon fibers, including their respective myelin sheaths. The first residue may then be used as a marker to conditionally dilate over the second residue to identify the co-occurrences. The method of the invention significantly reduces the workload of the reviewers by identifying roughly 95 percent of the axons, with only a one to two percent false alarm rate, based on a reasonable computation time of about one hour per sample on a fast workstation.

Method of extracting axon fibers and clusters

A method is described for acquisition, mosaicking, cueing and interactive review of large-scale transmission electron micrograph composite images. Individual frames are automatically registered and mosaiced together into a single virtual image composite, which is then used to perform automatic cueing of axons and axon clusters, as well as review and marking by qualified neuroanatomists. Statistics derived from the review process were used to evaluate the efficacy of the drug in promoting regeneration of myelinated nerve fibers.

Mosaic construction, processing, and review of very large electronic

A handwritten character image normalization technique provides predetermined pixel dimensions and a normalized skew. The skew slope of the input image is calculated. This skew slope is employed to determine the bounds of the smallest parallelogram which completely encloses all of the stroke pixels of the input image. This parallelogram has a first pair of opposed horizontal sides and a second pair of opposed sides having the skew slope. The stroke pixels of this parallelogram are then mapped into the standard size horizontal row and vertical column pixel dimensions using horizontal and vertical scaling factors determined from the parallelogram dimensions and the standard dimensions. This mapping employs a subpixel grid of the normalized pixels. Candidate stroke pixels are identified which correspond to any part of a stroke pixel of the input image. A candidate stroke pixel is set to a stroke pixel if and only if the number of such subpixels mapped into a stroke pixel of the input image exceeds a predetermined number.

Growing community of inventors

Ann Arbor, MI, United States of America

Robert C Vogt, Iii