Research On Color Image Processing For Digital Microscope System

The image quality of color digital imaging devices has been greatly improved than that in the past. It is not only due to the advances in image sensor itself, but also the development of the increasingly powerful image processors. Such as the DSP chips, produced by Texas Instruments and Tai-Xin Companies. The procedure, which converts the RAW image data captured by image sensor into real color image, is called color image pipeline. Whether the captured color image is high-quality largely depends on how the color image pipeline is designed.This article aims to designing a color image pipeline, which can be applied to the digital microscope system, in order to obtain high-quality color image. A good color image supplies a good visual appearance, and is good for post-image processing and analysis as well. Most researches on the color image pipeline are about digital cameras and video cameras recently, but few of them are about digital microscopes. In this paper, the microscope characteristics are fully taken into account when designing the color image pipeline. Then, a proposed color image pipeline for digital microscope is given, and several important steps, such as light control, white balance, demosaicing, color correction, etc. are discussed in detail. Finally, the design of color image pipeline is optimized and implemented on the platform, which consists of biological microscope, electronic eyepiece based on CMOS and personal computer. The output color images are visually pleasant, and the system meets the real-time requirements very well.The paper also discussed several applications about microscope image processing and analysis, including the fluorescence color image composition, as well as the cells segmentation and feature extraction. The fluorescence color image composition is commonly used in fluoroimmunoassay. The research in this paper has laid a good foundation for further work.