A 3D self-adjust region growing method for axon extraction

Neuron axon analysis is an important means to investigate disease mechanisms and signaling pathways in neurobiology and often requires collecting a great amount of statistical information and phenomena. Automated extraction of axons in 3D microscopic images posts a key problem in the field of neuron axon analysis. To address tortuous axons in 3D volumes, a self-adjust region growing approach referring to surface modeling and self-adjustment which takes advantage of the nature of axon (e.g., continuity), is presented. Experimental results on axon volumes show that the proposed scheme provides a reliable solution to axon retrieving and overcomes several common drawbacks from other existing methods.