Using the P_n Potts model with learning methods to segment live cell images

We present a segmentation method for live cell images, using graph cuts and learning methods. The images used here are particularly challenging because of the shared grey-level distributions of cells and background, which only differ by their textures, and the local imprecision around cell borders. We use the P_n Potts model recently presented by Kohli et al. [9]: functions on higher-order cliques of pixels are included into the traditional Potts model, allowing us to account for local texture features, and to find the optimal solution efficiently. We use learning methods to define the potential functions used in the P_n Potts model. We present the model and the learning methods we used, and compare our segmentation results with similar work in cytometry. While our method performs similarly, it requires little manual tuning and thus is straightforward to adapt to other images.