A novel 2D and 3D wide-view imaging approach by controlling optimal range for cytopathological analysis in light microscopic system

Due to limitations of acquired pixel size and small field of view in the light microscopic system, pathologists must move microscope platform along the X-Y-Z axes without losing focusing in order to see whole regions of the specimen. Wide-view imaging provides a more realistic cytopathological analysis on the 2D and 3D panoramic images with an ultra-high resolution by minimizing these limitations. In this study, a novel 2D and 3D wide-view imaging approach is proposed for cytopathological analysis in light microscopic systems. This approach is performed in four main stages; estimation of optimal range, generation of optimal focused 2D & 3D adjacent images, control of optimal range and 2D & 3D image stitching. In contrast to literature studies for 2D and 3D wide-view imaging, optimal range and the number of multi-focus images are selected according to types of specimen and magnification objectives, and re-arranged to prevent the difference of focusing between adjacent images during X-Y movements of the platform. In order evaluate the performance of our proposed 2D wide-view imaging approach, two different 2D wide-view imaging approaches suggested in literature are applied to our datasets. The generated 2D wide-view images are compared using the metrics without requiring reference image, and the success of the proposed 2D and 3D wide-view imaging approach is proven by both quantitative and visual results.