Patch-based segmentation of overlapping cervical cells using active contour with local edge information

© 2017 IEEE. The Pap test is a manual screening procedure that is used to detect the precursor lesions of cervical cancer by analyzing changes in nuclei and cytoplasms of cervical cells. Due to the sensitivity of the Pap test to intra- and inter-observer variability, automating the procedure using digital image analysis test is still an open problem. Within this context, segmentation of overlapping cervical cells is a key component to develop image analysis methods. In this paper, we propose a framework for segmenting the cytoplasm of each individual cell depicted within an image of overlapping cervical cells. The proposed framework uses a patch-based approach where a parametric active contour detects, on a patch-by-path basis, the cytoplasm boundary of each overlapping cell. The active contour within the patch deforms under the influence of Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) forces computed based on the local edges depicted in each patch region. Results show that the proposed framework achieves more accurate cytoplasm segmentation results compared to the current state-of-art methods.