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US 11,769,223 B2Granted
Local tile-based registration and global placement for stitching
AssigneeVentana Medical Systems, Inc.
InventorsJim Martin, Anindya Sarkar
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Abstract
Techniques are provided for stitching tile images. A local registration can be performed to determine spatial relationships between pairs of adjacent tile images, in which the spatial relationships may be determined using normalized cross correlation (NCC) scores computed within a multi-resolution framework. A global placement can be performed to position all scanned tile images relative to one another. The global placement is determined with weighted least squares utilizing the determined spatial relationships between all adjacent greyscale tile images and the NCC scores as weights.
Claims20
A method of stitching tile images of a specimen-bearing slide, the method comprising:
- deriving a greyscale tile image for each tile image of a set of tile images, wherein each tile image of the set of tile images corresponds to a portion within a region of interest of the specimen-bearing slide;
- performing a local registration on the greyscale tile images to estimate a spatial relationship for each pair of pairs of adjacent greyscale tile images, wherein the spatial relationship defines an overlapping region between a corresponding pair of adjacent greyscale tile images, wherein the spatial relationship includes a tile shift value that is estimated based on a normalized cross correlation (NCC) score for a particular image resolution of a set of image resolutions, and wherein the NCC score is computed by using an integral image for the overlapping region at the particular image resolution;
- determining, from the pairs of adjacent greyscale tile images, that a reliability metric derived from a particular pair of adjacent greyscale tile images falls below a predetermined threshold;
- in response to determining that the reliability metric falls below the predetermined threshold, adjusting the tile shift value of the spatial relationship corresponding to the particular pair of adjacent greyscale tile images, thereby generating an adjusted spatial relationship for the particular pair of adjacent greyscale tile images;
- identifying a weighted least squares based on the spatial relationships of the pairs of adjacent greyscale tile images and the adjusted spatial relationship of the particular pair of adjacent greyscale tile images;
- identifying, based on the identified weighted least squares, a position of the each tile image of the set of tile images;
- and
- generating an output image generated by stitching the each tile image of the set of tile images based on an identified position of the respective tile image.
5 more elements
A system comprising:
- one or more data processors;
- and
- a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing instructions which, when executed on the one or more data processors, cause the one or more data processors to perform part or all of one or more methods comprising:
- for each pair of adjacent tile images of a plurality of tile images derived from a specimen-bearing slide:
- executing a local registration module to identify matching pixels between the pair of adjacent tile images, wherein:
- the matching pixels of the pair of adjacent tile images are identified based on a spatial relationship that includes a tile shift value that yields a highest normalized cross correlation score (NCC) in an overlapping region of the pair of adjacent tile images;
- the NCC score corresponds to a particular image resolution of a set of image resolutions;
- and
- the NCC score is computed by using an integral image for the overlapping region at the particular image resolution;
- deriving a reliability metric from the pair of adjacent tile images;
- determining whether the reliability metric falls below a predetermined threshold;
- if the reliability metric falls below the predetermined threshold, adjusting the tile shift value of the spatial relationship corresponding to the pair of adjacent tile images;
- and
- executing a global placement module to position, based on the spatial relationship of the identified matching pixels, a first tile image of the pair of adjacent tile images relative to a second tile image of the pair of adjacent tile images, thereby generating a pair of positioned tile images that correspond to the pair of adjacent tile images;
- and
- executing a stitching module to generate an output image by stitching each pair of the pairs of positioned tile images.
13 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.