Volume estimation from single images: an application to pancreatic islets

Abstract

The present paper deals with the problem of volume estimation of individual objects from a single 2D view. Our main application is volume estimation of pancreatic (Langerhans) islets and the single 2D view constraint comes from the time and equipment limitations of the standard clinical procedure. Two main approaches are followed in this paper. First, two regression-based methods are proposed, using a set of simple shape descriptors of the segmented image of the islet. Second, two example-based methods are proposed, based on a database of islets with known volume. For training and evaluation, islet volumes were determined by OPT microscopy and a stereological volume estimation using the so-called Fakir probes. The performance of the single image volume estimation methods is studied on a set of 99 islets from human donors. Further experiments were also performed on a stone dataset and on synthetic 3D shapes, generated using a flexible stochastic particle model. The proposed methods are fast and the experimental results show that in most situations the proposed methods perform significantly better than the methods currently used in clinical practice, which are based on simple spherical or ellipsoidal models.