Analysis, Recognition, and Classification of Biological Membrane Images.

Biological membrane images contain a variety of objects and patterns, which convey information about the underlying biological structures and mechanisms. The field of image analysis includes methods of computation which convert features and objects identified in images into quantitative information about biological structures represented in these images. Microscopy images are complex, noisy, and full of artifacts and consequently require multiple image processing steps for the extraction of meaningful quantitative information. This review is focused on methods of analysis of images of cells and biological membranes such as detection, segmentation, classification and machine learning, registration, tracking, and visualization. These methods could make possible, for example, to automatically identify defects in the cell membrane which affect physiological processes. Detailed analysis of membrane images could facilitate understanding of the underlying physiological structures or help in the interpretation of biological experiments.