Based On Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope Image Processing Technology Research

Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy (LSCM) is now established as a valuable tool for obtaining high resolution images of a variety of Biological specimens. The development of Cellular Biology makes higher demand to LSCM, and requires appropriate image analysis and processing system to realize the process, visualization and data exploration.The image processing and analysis system aiming at the LSCM has been set up in our laboratory includes image preprocess, visualization of specimen contour and internal structure based on Marching cubes and interactive volume rendering as well as a series of interactive analysis technology. After analyzing the theory and characteristic of the LSCM, in order to obtain the better visualization result, we make auto-focusing and image restoration as the main study directions.For the disability of the auto-focusing of the LSCM, the study advances a fast image process algorithm to focus on an object image based on the image grey and entropy of the grey graduation. The auto-focusing technology applied in the LSCM will improve the resolution of scanning images. Analyzing the characteristic of the optical structure of the LSCM and it's influence on the images quality, we carry the theoretic computation of the point spread function of the LSCM and adopt the expectation maximum arithmetic based on the maximum-likelihood estimation method to restore the blurred images. This step is very propitious to the visualization and result analysis.Combining above study results with the existed image analysis and processing system would further optimize the visualization quality and veracity of analysis of data, therefore provide more external reference to the physiological meaning expressed by the LSCM data.