Special issue on microscopy image analysis for biomedical applications

Abstract

Demand for tools that extract quantitative information frommicroscopyimagesofbiologicalsamplescontinuestogrow.This is providing interesting challenges for computer visionresearchers. Typical tasks are detection, segmentation, clas-sification, motion analysis, and tracking of cells and subcel-lular compartments. Image data are acquired using variousimaging technologies, each with its own characteristics. Inthe six papers presented in this special issue these includebrightfield [1], phase contrast [7], electron [5], and fluores-cence [2,3,6] microscopy. There is also considerable vari-ation in the biological samples to be analysed. Here theseinclude plant roots, cervical cancer cells and neuronal den-drites, for example.These papers were selected and revised from submis-sions received in response to an open call for papers. Threeof them [1,5,6] were developed from presentations at thesymposium on microscopy image analysis for biomedicalapplications that we chaired in April 2010. The meetingwas organised by the British Machine Vision Association(BMVA) and held at the British Computer Society in Lon-don. A further paper based on a talk given at that meeting,on nuclei detection using support vector machines, has alsobeen published recently in this journal [4].