Image Analysis Algorithm for the Corneal Endothelium

The number of the living endothelial cells and the shape of those are very import clinical parameters for the evaluation of the quality of cornea. In this paper, we developed the automated endothelial cell counting and shape analysis algorithm for a confocal microscope. Since, the endothelial images from the confocal microscope has a non-uniform illumination and low contrast between cell boundaries and cell bodies, it is very difficult to segment the cells from the endothelial images. To cope with these difficulties, we proposed the new two stage image processing algorithm. At first stage algorithm, we used a high-pass filter and histogram equalization to compensate the non-uniform brightness pattern and a morphological filter and a watershed method are applied to detect the boundary of cells. From this stage, we could count the number of cells in an endothelial image. At second stage algorithm, we used a Voronoi diagram method to classify the shape of cells. This cell shape analysis and the percent of hexagonal cells are very sensitive in detecting the early endothelium damage. To evaluate the performance of the proposed system, we p개cessed seven endothelial images obtained using a confocal microscope. The proposed system correctly counted 95.5% cells and classified 92.0% of hexagonal cell shapes. This result is better than any others in this research area.