Automated Histological Analysis System for Quantifying Microstructural Damage Accumulation to the Annulus Fibrosus

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed an automated histological analysis system for quantifying microstructural damage accumulation to the annulus fibrosus. This system takes in a digital histology image and uses Gaussian mixture model based segmentation, followed by connected components analysis to extract and label possible clefts. The image is then refined through spatial and size constraints. Finally, the required statistics for quantifying microstructural damage are calculated.