Robust Cell Image Segmentation via Improved Markov Random Field Based on a Chinese Restaurant Process Model

Abstract

In this paper, a segmentation method for cell images using Markov random field (MRF) based on a Chinese restaurant process model (CRPM) is proposed. Firstly, we carry out the preprocessing on the cell images, and then we focus on cell image segmentation using MRF based on a CRPM under a maximum a posteriori (MAP) criterion. The CRPM can be used to estimate the number of clusters in advance, adjusting the number of clusters automatically according to the size of the data. Finally, the conditional iteration mode (CIM) method is used to implement the MRF based cell image segmentation process. To validate our proposed method, segmentation experiments are performed on oral mucosal cell images. The segmentation results were compared with other methods, using precision, Dice, and mean square error (MSE) as the objective evaluation criteria. The experimental results show that our method produces accurate cell image segmentation results, and our method can effectively improve segmentation for the nucleus, binuclear cell, and micronucleus cell. This work will play an important role in cell image recognition and analysis.