Fully Convolutional DenseNets for Segmentation of Microvessels in Two-photon Microscopy

Segmentation of microvessels measured using two-photon microscopy has been studied in the literature with limited success due to uneven intensities associated with optical imaging and shadowing effects. In this work, we address this problem using a customized version of a recently developed fully convolutional neural network, namely, FC-DensNets. To train and validate the network, manual annotations of 8 angiograms from two-photon microscopy was used. Segmentation results are then compared with that of a state-of-the-art scheme that was developed for the same purpose and also based on deep learning. Experimental results show improved performance of used FC-DenseNet in providing accurate and yet end-to-end segmentation of microvessels in two-photon microscopy.