Premium
Continuous maximum flow segmentation method for nanoparticle interaction analysis
Author(s) -
MARAK L.,
TANKYEVYCH O.,
TALBOT H.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2818.2011.03507.x
Subject(s) - segmentation , polystyrene , image segmentation , nanometre , materials science , electron tomography , computer science , computer vision , sample (material) , nanoparticle , artificial intelligence , flow (mathematics) , transmission electron microscopy , optics , biological system , nanotechnology , mathematics , scanning transmission electron microscopy , physics , polymer , chemistry , composite material , geometry , chromatography , biology
Summary In recent years, tomographic three‐dimensional reconstruction approaches using electrons rather than X‐rays have become popular. Such images produced with a transmission electron microscope make it possible to image nanometre‐scale materials in three‐dimensional. However, they are also noisy, limited in contrast and most often have a very poor resolution along the axis of the electron beam. The analysis of images stemming from such modalities, whether fully or semiautomated, is therefore more complicated. In particular, segmentation of objects is difficult. In this paper, we propose to use the continuous maximum flow segmentation method based on a globally optimal minimal surface model. The use of this fully automated segmentation and filtering procedure is illustrated on two different nanoparticle samples and provide comparisons with other classical segmentation methods. The main objectives are the measurement of the attraction rate of polystyrene beads to silica nanoparticle (for the first sample) and interaction of silica nanoparticles with large unilamellar liposomes (for the second sample). We also illustrate how precise measurements such as contact angles can be performed.