Tokiya ABE¹, Yuri MURAKAMI^2,3, Masahiro YAMAGUCHI^1,3, Nagaaki OHYAMA^2,3 and Yukako YAGI⁴

¹Imaging Science and Engineering Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatuta, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8503, Japan
²Frontier Collaborative Research Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259 Nagatuta, Midori-ku, Yokohama 226-8503, Japan
³Akasaka Natural Vision Research Center, Telecommunications Advancement Organization of Japan, 1-8-6 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052, Japan
⁴University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Pittsburgh, 5230, Centre Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232-1381, U.S.A.

(Received November 2, 2004; Accepted April 21, 2005)

Pathological images are color images of stained tissue slides, the color of which varies depending on staining conditions. For reliable diagnosis, the color variation must be corrected in these images. This paper proposes a color correction method for hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained pathological images in which the amounts of H&E dyes are estimated based on multispectral imaging technique and Beer Lambert law, and the color image is generated corresponding to the adjusted amount of dyes. This enables us to correct an image to an arbitrary or specified optimal staining-condition image. Through experiments using H&E stained human liver slide images, the effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed.

Key words: microscopy, pathology, spectral imaging, color reproduction, color correction