Colour deconvolution: stain unmixing in histological imaging

Motivation: Microscopy images of stained cells and tissues play a central role in most biomedical experiments and routine histopathology. Storing colour histological images digitally opens the possibility to process numerically colour distribution and intensity to extract quantitative data. Among those numerical procedures are colour deconvolution, which enable decomposing an RGB image into channels representing the optical absorbance and transmittance of the dyes when their RGB representation is known. Consequently, a range of new applications become possible for morphological and histochemical segmentation, automated marker localization and image enhancement.

Automated summary

Storing color histological images digitally allows for processing and extracting quantitative data through methods such as color deconvolution, enabling new applications like morphological and histochemical segmentation, automated marker localization, and image enhancement.