Image resizing using saliency strength map and seam carving for white blood cell analysis

BACKGROUND: A new image-resizing method using seam carving and a Saliency Strength Map (SSM) is proposed to preserve important contents, such as white blood cells included in blood cell images. METHODS: To apply seam carving to cell images, a SSM is initially generated using a visual attention model and the structural properties of white blood cells are then used to create an energy map for seam carving. As a result, the energy map maximizes the energies of the white blood cells, while minimizing the energies of the red blood cells and background. Thus, the use of a SSM allows the proposed method to reduce the image size efficiently, while preserving the important white blood cells. RESULTS: Experimental results using the PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and ROD (Ratio of Distortion) of blood cell images confirm that the proposed method is able to produce better resizing results than conventional methods, as the seam carving is performed based on an SSM and energy map. CONCLUSIONS: For further improvement, a faster medical image resizing method is currently being investigated to reduce the computation time, while maintaining the same image quality.