An innovative methodology for segmenting vessel like structures using artificial intelligence and image processing

Abstract

Abstract Innovation is currently driving enhanced performance and productivity across various fields through process automation. However, identifying intricate details in images can often pose challenges due to morphological variations or specific conditions. Here, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role by simplifying the segmentation of images. This is achieved by training algorithms to detect specific pixels, thereby recognizing details within images. In this study, an algorithm incorporating modules based on Efficient Sub-Pixel Convolutional Neural Network for image super-resolution, U-Net based Neural baseline for image segmentation, and image binarization for masking was developed. The combination of these modules aimed to identify capillary structures at pixel level. The method was applied on different datasets containing images of eye fundus, citrus leaves, printed circuit boards to test how well it could segment the capillary structures. Notably, the trained model exhibited versatility in recognizing capillary structures across various image types. When tested with the Set 5 and Set 14 datasets, a PSNR of 37.92 and SSIM of 0.9219 was achieved, surpassing significantly other image superresolution methods. The enhancement module processes the image using three different varaiables in the same way, which imposes a complexity of O(n) and takes 308,734 ms to execute; the segmentation module evaluates each pixel against its neighbors to correctly segment regions of interes, generating an $$O(n^{2})$$ quadratic complexity and taking 687,509 ms to execute; the masking module makes several runs through the whole image and in several occasions it calls processes of $$O(n\log n)$$ complexity at 581686 microseconds to execute, which makes it not only the most complex but also the most exhaustive part of the program. This versatility, rooted in its pixel-level operation, enables the algorithm to identify initially unnoticed details, enhancing its applicability across diverse image datasets. This innovation holds significant potential for precisely studying certain structures’ characteristics while enhancing and processing images with high fidelity through AI-driven machine learning algorithms.

Keywords

• Artificial intelligence
• Image segmentation
• Convolutional neural network
• Pixel