METHOD OF ANALYZING CELL OR THE LIKE HAVING LINEAR SHAPE, METHOD OF ANALYZING NERVE CELL AND APPARATUS AND PROGRAM FOR PERFORMING THESE METHODS

It is intended to propose a technique whereby a nerve cell is morphologically analyzed automatically based on a three-dimensional image of the nerve cell. First, a dendritic projection is traced by using the scale space method. In this step, irregularities are reduced by using the σ-convolution smoothing method and thus the center line of the dendritic projection is identified. Next, a negative curvature is searched for by the Hess tensor method. The part corresponding to the negative curvature in all coordinate axes is judged as the area occupied by “heads”. The center of this area (heads) is referred to as the spine position. Approximation is made on the assumption that the spine head has an ellipsoidal shape. Thus, the minor diameter, medium diameter and major diameter of the ellipsoid are calculated. From the spine position, a perpendicular line is dropped toward the dendritic projection closest thereto and this perpendicular line is considered as the column part. By combining the dendritic projection with the spine head and column thus obtained, the final morphological shape of the nerve cell is obtained.