Thyroid cancer cells boundary location by a fuzzy edge detection method

Morphometric assessment of tumor cells is important in the prediction of biological behavior of thyroid cancer. In order to automate the process, the computer-based system has to recognize the boundary of the cells. Many methods for the boundary detection have appeared in the literature and some of them applied to microscopic slice analysis. However, there is no reliable method since the gray-levels in the nuclei are uneven and are similar to the background. In the paper, a fuzzy edge detection method is used and is based on an improved generalized fuzzy operator. The method enhances the nuclei and effectively separates the cells from the background.