Abstract
Fluorescence imaging of dynamical processes in live cells often results in a low signal-to-noise ratio. We present a novel feature-preserving non-local means approach to denoise such images to improve feature recovery and particle detection. The commonly used non-local means filter is not optimal for noisy biological images containing small features of interest because image noise prevents accurate determination of the correct coefficients for averaging, leading to over-smoothing and other artifacts. Our adaptive method addresses this problem by constructing a particle feature probability image, which is based on Haar-like feature extraction. The particle probability image is then used to improve the estimation of the correct coefficients for averaging. We show that this filter achieves higher peak signal-to-noise ratio in denoised images and has a greater capability in identifying weak particles when applied to synthetic data. We have applied this approach to live-cell images resulting in enhanced detection of end-binding-protein 1 foci on dynamically extending microtubules in photo-sensitive Drosophila tissues. We show that our feature-preserving non-local means filter can reduce the threshold of imaging conditions required to obtain meaningful data.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 233-243 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Journal of Structural Biology |
| Volume | 172 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Early online date | 3 Jul 2010 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Dec 2010 |
Keywords
- Denoising
- Particle detection
- Feature extraction
- Non-local means filter
- Drosophila
- Microtubules