Intensity integrated Laplacian algorithm for human metaphase chromosome centromere detection

Centromere localization in human metaphase chromosomes is an essential task in many cytogenetic diagnosis procedures. The centromere location can be utilized to derive information such as the chromosome type, polarity assignment etc. Methods available in literature yield unreliable results mainly due to high variability of morphology in metaphase chromosomes and boundary noise in the image. In this paper we have proposed a multi-staged algorithm which utilizes both contour information as well as intensity information to obtain a more accurate centromere location. The width information along the axis of symmetry is obtained using a novel Laplacian based thickness measurement algorithm. The proposed method was observed to be more accurate compared to the state of the art when tested with 226 human metaphase chromosomes.