Exploring HSI imagery for overlapped chromosomes segmentation

Abstract The segmentation of overlapping chromosomes in metaphase images is alongstanding challenge in cytogenetics, where limited spectral contrast inconventional RGB imaging. In this study, we explore hyperspectral imaging(HSI) as a promising alternative modality to enhance segmentation accuracyby exploiting information from a narrow band of the spectrum. To evaluatethe benefit of spectral data, we acquired and annotated a dedicated dataset ofoverlapping chromosomes, using a hyperspectral microscopy system. Multiplesegmentation baseline models were trained and benchmarked on both RGB andHSI data. Experimental results show that HSI-based models consistently outper-form RGB-based counterparts, achieving up to 92% Dice score. These findingsunderline the potential of HSI for improving cytogenetic image analysis andprovide a new benchmark dataset for future research in spectral segmentation.