8. astec_astec

The name astec comes from the Phd work of L. Guignard [Gui15] where ASTEC is the acronym of adaptive segmentation and tracking of embryonic cells.

This method aims at producing a segmentation of each membrane cell image (e.g. a fused image) temporal sequence, as well as a property file containing the cell volumes, and the cell lineages (see section Image sequence properties). This is a method of segmentation by propagation: it used the segmentation of the previous timepoint (say \(t-1\)) to constraint the segmentation at the aimed timepoint (say \(t\)).

8.1. Astec method overview

Astec principle is to guide the segmentation of the \(t\) timepoint image \(I_{t}\) with the segmentation \(S^\star_{t-1}\) of the \(t-1\) timepoint image \(I_{t-1}\).

  1. A first segmentation of \(I_{t}\), \(\tilde{S}_{t}\), is computed by a seeded watershed, where the seeds are the eroded cells of \(S^\star_{t-1}\), projected onto \(I_{t}\). By construction, no cell division can occur.

  2. \(h\)-minima are computed over a range of \(h\) values. Studying the numbers of \(h\)-minima located in each cell of \(\tilde{S}_{t}\) gives an indication whether there might be a cell division or not. From this study a seed image \(Seeds_{t}\) is computed, and then a new segmentation image \(\hat{S}_{t}\).

  3. Some potential errors are detected by checking whether there is a significant volume decrease from a cell of \(S^\star_{t-1}\) and its corresponding cells in \(\hat{S}_{t}\). For such cells, seeds may be recomputed, as well as the \(\hat{S}_{t}\) segmentation.

  4. It may occur, in previous step, that some cell from \(S^\star_{t-1}\) correspond to 3 cells in \(\hat{S}_{t}\). This step aims at correcting this.

  5. Some other potential errors are detected by checking whether there is a significant volume decrease from a cell of \(S^\star_t\) and its corresponding cells in \(\hat{S}_{t}\) due to a background invasion. For such cells, morphosnakes [MarquezNBA14] are computed to try to recover cell loss.

  6. The morphosnake correction operated in previous step may invade the background too much. This step aims at correcting this.

8.2. Astec / output data

The results are stored in sub-directories SEG/SEG_<EXP_SEG> under the /path/to/experiment/ directory where where <EXP_SEG> is the value of the variable EXP_SEG (its default value is ‘RELEASE’).

/path/to/experiment/
├── ...
├── SEG/
│  └── SEG_<EXP_SEG>
│     ├── <EN>_mars_t<begin>.<image_suffix>
│     ├── <EN>_seg_lineage.xml
│     ├── <EN>_seg_t<begin>.<image_suffix>
│     ├── <EN>_seg_t<...>.<image_suffix>
│     ├── <EN>_seg_t<end>.<image_suffix>
│     └── LOGS/
...

8.3. Input image pre-processing

The input image (typically the fused image representing the cell membranes/walls) can be pre-processed before use in the astec stage (as for astec_mars, see section Steps 1 and 4: input image pre-processing). More details can be found in section Image preprocessing. The pre-processing can be different for the

  • the seed input image (the one that will be used to compute the \(h\)-minima),

  • the membrane input image (the one that will be used as the height image for the seeded watersheds), and

  • the morphosnake input image (the one that will be used to define the morphosnake energy).

Pre-processing parameters, described in section Preprocessing parameters, and prefixed respectively by seed_, membrane_ and morphosnake_ allow to tune these pre-processings. Hence, the lines


seed_intensity_transformation = ‘Identity’ membrane_intensity_transformation = ‘normalization_to_u8’ morphosnake_intensity_transformation = ‘Identity’ intensity_enhancement = None

come to choose the original image for both the seed extraction and the morphosnake stage, but its normalization on 8 bits for the seeded watershed (this corresponds to the choice of the historical version of astec).

If required (if the variables keep_reconstruction``s are set to ``True, see Preprocessing parameters), the pre-processed images are kept and stored in the REC-XXX/REC_<EXP_SEG>/ or REC-XXX/REC_<EXP_RECONSTRUCTION>/ directories. with XXX being either MEMBRANE, SEED, or MORPHOSNAKE. (see Image preprocessing).

8.4. Step 1: \(\tilde{S}_{t}\)

A first segmentation of \(I_{t}\), \(\tilde{S}_{t}\), is computed by a seeded watershed, where the seeds are built from the eroded cells of \(S^\star_{t-1}\).

  • previous_seg_method = 'erode_then_deform'

    The cells of \(S^\star_{t-1}\) are first eroded, yielding the image \(S^e_{t-1}\), then this image is mapped onto \(I_{t}\) frame thanks to the transformation \(\mathcal{T}_{t-1 \leftarrow t}\), resulting in the eroded seed image \(S^e_{t-1 \leftarrow t} = S^e_{t-1} \circ \mathcal{T}_{t-1 \leftarrow t}\). This is the historical astec behavior.

  • previous_seg_method = 'deform_then_erode'

    \(S^\star_{t-1}\) is first mapped onto \(I_{t}\) frame thanks to the transformation \(\mathcal{T}_{t-1 \leftarrow t}\), resulting in the image \(S^\star_{t-1 \leftarrow t} = S^\star_{t-1} \circ \mathcal{T}_{t-1 \leftarrow t}\). Cells of \(S^\star_{t-1 \leftarrow t}\) are then eroded to get \(S^e_{t-1 \leftarrow t}\)

This seed image, \(S^e_{t-1 \leftarrow t}\), plus the membrane input image are used as input for a seeded watershed, and yield \(\tilde{S}_{t}\). By construction, no cell division can occur in \(\tilde{S}_{t}\) with respect to \(S^\star_{t-1}\).

If the variable propagation_strategy is set to 'seeds_from_previous_segmentation', the segmentation propagation stops and \(\tilde{S}_{t}\) is the final result.

8.5. Step 2: \(\hat{S}_{t}\)

The \(h\)-minima are computed in the seed input image for a range of \(h \in [h_{min}, h_{max}]\), with a step of \(\delta h\).

\(h_{min}\), \(h_{max}\) and \(\delta h\) are set respectively by the variables watershed_seed_hmin_min_value, watershed_seed_hmin_max_value, and watershed_seed_hmin_delta_value.

For a given cell of \(\tilde{S}_{t}\), if there is no cell division, and if the \(h\)-minima are well detected, ther should be only one \(h\)-minima included in the cell for all values of \(h\). However, if a cell division occurs, there should be mostly two \(h\)-minima included in the cell. Then, the study of the number of \(h\)-minima strictly included allows to decide whether a cell division has occur (see [Gui15], [GFL+20] for details).

This resulting seed image plus the membrane input image are used as input for a seeded watershed, and yield the image \(\hat{S}_{t}\).

If the variable propagation_strategy is set to 'seeds_selection_without_correction', the segmentation propagation stops and \(\hat{S}_{t}\) is the final result.

8.6. Steps 3 and 4: volume checking

Some potential errors are detected by checking whether there is a large volume decrease from a cell of \(S^\star_{t-1}\) and its corresponding cells in \(\hat{S}_{t}\). For such cells, seeds are recomputed, as well as the \(\hat{S}_{t}\) segmentation.

It may occur, in this step, that some cell from \(S^\star_{t-1}\) correspond, after correction, to 3 cells in \(\hat{S}_{t}\). A second step aims at correcting this.

8.7. Steps 5 and 6: morphosnake correction

This step is performed if morphosnake_correction is set to True.

Some other potential errors are detected by checking whether there is a significant volume decrease from a cell of \(S^\star_t\) and its corresponding cells in \(\hat{S}_{t}\) due to a background invasion. For such cells, morphosnakes [MarquezNBA14] are computed to try to recover cell loss.