Image processing and interactive visualization of confocal microscopy images

The essence and methodology is proposed for image processing and interactive visualization of confocal microscopy images. Firstly, an intensity compensation algorithm is applied to reduce noises resulted from light absorption and scattering by objects and particles in the volume through which light passed. Secondly, a deconvolution algorithm based on Maximum A Posteriori is applied to improve the image stacks' quality. Lastly, the ray-casting algorithm is used to reconstruct the fine details in the volume. Furthermore, interactive control panel is integrated to provide users an intuitive interface to view the cells and its structures through translation, rotation and zoom in/out operations. Experimental results demonstrate that the speed and versatility of the program allows for convenient, fast, interactive examination of unknown cell structures even on commodity PC without any other special hardware. The program is also able to visualize dynamically changing temporary structures conveniently in addition to static images.