Diameter droplet on image low contrast

Dear all,

I have a bunch of pictures like as I uploaded in my post. The image represents lipids droplets of an adipocyte. The images are acquired on a Raman spectrometer with transmitting white light. The numbers in the lipid droplets show where I did my analysis. I cannot re-acquire the image since the samples are gone. What I would like to do? I would like to calculate the diameter of droplets (which has a number inside).

My problem is: it is difficult to segment the shape of the droplet based only on colour of the droplet, because there is no clear contrast.

I’m a beginner in the image processing toolbox, but I’m familiar with Matlab. I made some search on internet, but there is so many functions with the image processing toolbox that I feel lost.

My two questions to the community:

1. Could I calculate the diameters with Matlab with this kind of image ?or the image is so “bad” that I can’t calculate the diameter?
2. Could you give me tracks to follow because I don’t know where to start?

My plan B is to segment manually the droplet with Image J. But I have approximately 6000 droplets. Doing this manually and one by one, I cannot imagine to do this.

Thanks for your help !

PS: From my research on internet, I was thinking about morphological function. Is it the good track?

[sloppydisk]

You can use imfindcircles and some contrast enhancement like histeq but it seems difficult for your problem, because you want to also select certain droplets and the bubbles have shading at the edge, so they are not a uniform color. But that is the direction I would look.

[Image Analyst]

It might take less time to manually outline 6000 droplets than to develop an automatic algorithm. I have an example attached that used imfreehand().

[Kul Pun]

hi, i am really struggling to find the droplet of water and oil can u guys suggest me the best way to calculate the oil and droplet which may be 500-1000 um. pl

Answer 1

[falguifrog]

thanks for your feedback !