Application program for wound healing measurement based on the region growing technique: A trial version
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Abstract
Background: The study of cell migration is one of the most interesting topics in cancer research. Wound healing assay is a basic 2D technique used to follow cell migration. The area of a wound’s images are measured and calculated to demonstrate the percentage of moving cells. Normally, the measurements are estimated by direct scaling of observers, which unavoidably involves human error. Moreover, there is yet to be a gold standard technique for measurement. Recently, image processing tools have been provided to use and easily carry out measurement, such as ImageJ software and others.
Objectives: This study proposed to take the advantage of the region growing algorithm for wound healing measurement.
Materials and methods: Basic algorithm was used for segmentation of the low contrast area of the wound area from the background in each image. Moreover, contrast limited adaptive histogram equalisation and edge detection techniques were applied in order to improve the quality of images. Program codes were generated and conformed to be the finalised program, named the wound healing measurement program for the trial version.
Results: The program was compared to ImageJ, with the results showing that there were no statistically significant differences (p>0.05, n=3). However, time for all processes of this program was fast and not dependent on the shape of the wound. Intra observer and inter-observer reproducibility of this study found a correlation coefficient within groups close to 1. The average satisfaction of observers for using the program was 4.45.
Conclusion: Thus, it was concluded that this study could apply the region growing technique for the measurement of cell migration program. However, there were problems that occurred during the proceeding in this version. Therefore, we aim to resolve and improve the efficiency of this program in future work.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Personal views expressed by the contributors in their articles are not necessarily those of the Journal of Associated Medical Sciences, Faculty of Associated Medical Sciences, Chiang Mai University.
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