Plaque detection method for imaging of cells

A plaque detection apparatus, comprising the at least one processor programmed to receive above focus images to detect the presence of live cells without detecting the lysed cell materials;

• receiving below focus images wherein virtual dark regions exist which are similar to cell shadows as seeds in a segmentation process;
• using contours around each resulting shape to obtain a subset that are more likely to be part of the cell population to define a cell map;
• creating a distance map in which each pixel value is the distance of that pixel from the nearest pixel of the cell map;
• thresholding the distance map to create a first image of the places which are relatively far from the cells;
• and creating a second image with a smaller distance threshold to get an image that mimics the edges of the cells.

A plaque detection method, comprising the steps of:

• using above focus images to detect the presence of live cells without detecting the lysed cell materials;
• applying a localized adaptive threshold process to the images to produce a map of spots where intensity has concentrated;
• using below focus images wherein virtual dark regions exist which are similar to cell shadows;
• using bright spots in the below focus images as seeds in a segmentation process;
• defining contours around each resulting shape;
• using parameters of shape and size to filter these contours to a subset that are more likely to be part of the cell population;
• rendering the contours that remain onto an image and detect regions that are empty;
• creating a distance map in which each pixel value is the distance of that pixel from the nearest pixel of the cell map;
• thresholding the distance map to create a first image of the places which are relatively far from the cells;
• creating a second image with a smaller distance threshold to get an image that mimics the edges of the cells;
• using the first image as a set of seeds for an additional application of a watershed algorithm;
• and
• using the second image as the topography.