Cell morphology classification in phase contrast microscopy image reducing halo artifact

Since the morphology of tumor cells is a good indicator of their invasiveness, we used time-lapse phase-contrast microscopy to examine the morphology of tumor cells. This technique enables long-term observation of the activity of live cells without photobleaching and phototoxicity which is common in other fluorescence-labeled microscopy. However, it does have certain drawbacks in terms of imaging. Therefore, we first corrected for non-uniform illumination artifacts and then we use intensity distribution information to detect cell boundary. In phase contrast microscopy image, cell is normally appeared as dark region surrounded by bright halo ring. Due to halo artifact is minimal around the cell body and has non-symmetric diffusion pattern, we calculate cross sectional plane which intersects center of each cell and orthogonal to first principal axis. Then, we extract dark cell region by analyzing intensity profile curve considering local bright peak as halo area. Finally, we examined cell morphology to classify tumor cells as malignant and benign.