A shape model for contour extraction of Drosophila embryos

Drosophila embryonic images provide valuable spatial and temporal information of gene expression. Extraction of the contour of a targeting embryo in an embryonic image is a fundamental step of a computational system for the study of gene-gene interaction on Drosophila. In this paper, we propose a shape model for contour extraction of Drosophila embryos. The shape model is built on connected components of edge pixels. It approximates a connected component of edge pixels by a polygon that can be either convex or concave. The main contribution of the proposed shape model is its ability of segmenting embryos touching each other. Moreover, the proposed shape model is adaptable to a wide range of applications on contour extraction.