Anisotropic Phase Stretch Transform-Based Algorithm for Segmentation of Activated Sludge Phase-Contrast Microscopic Image

The activated sludge (AS) process is a biological treatment process of wastewater used in sewage treatment plants, in which settling of AS is vitally important for wastewater treatment. In AS, however, bulking caused by filamentous bacteria will significantly reduce the settling capacity of activated sludge. Traditionally, the physicochemical method has been used to monitor the status or performance of filamentous bacteria in activated sludge, while it is a very compromising means in modern digital quality control for wastewater treatment when digital image processing and analysis technology is used to determine the status of filamentous bacteria in activated sludge. In order to avoid the disadvantages of deficient direction selectivity in the translation vector field for isotropic phase stretch transform (PST) and high noise susceptibility in determining the status of filamentous bacteria in AS and low accuracy, an anisotropic PST (APST) method for filamentous bacteria test in AS was proposed in this paper; specifically speaking, by analyzing and deriving the disadvantages of the traditional isotropic PST kernel function, we designed an APST kernel function, put forward a non-maximum suppression strategy for processing of images from different aspects and combined with the relative total variation theory to form APST-based algorithm for segmentation of activated sludge phase-contrast microscopic image. According to a large number of experimental results, in terms of the overall segmentation effect or the subjective and objective evaluation indicators, the resultant algorithm in this paper is superior to the latest traditional PST segmentation algorithm, Canny image segmentation algorithm and Sobel image segmentation algorithm. Also, the segmentation results for filamentous bacteria showed that probability rand index (PRI) and global consistency error (GCE) indicators were all improved by about 30%, supporting the effectiveness and superiority of the algorithm in this paper.