Detecting end points or branched points from the skeleton of a single chromosome

The end-points or the branched-points from the skeleton of a single chromosome can be extracted using mathematical morphology operators implemented in mahotas.

Two images of metaphasic human chromosomes hybridized with a Cy3-telomeric PNA probe and  counterstained with DAPI, were used.

 

False color DAPI image

False color telomeres image

The location of a chromosome was identified, some preprocessing step were performed to segment the chromosome (hi-pass filtering followed by a simple thresholding).

The end-points, the branching points are extracted from the skeleton with a hit-or-miss operator implemented in mahotas, then overlayed on the original chromosome image.

The contour of the segmented telomeres are also overlayed:

Depending on the amount of high-pass filtering the chromosome skeleton fit the chromosome axis or the chromatids:

Skeletonization after "low" high-pass filtering

Skeletonization after a stronger high-pass filtering

In both cases, the skeleton is displayed in red, the branched-points in green, the end-points in blue, the chromosome contour in magenta, and finally the telomeres in yellow.
To run the code (python 2.7), the path to the images must be modified and mahotas and pymorph must be installed.
Download code