An Image Preprocessing Method for Fingernail Segmentation in Microscopy Image

The digital image processing plays an important part in medical image. In traditional Chinese medicine, the surface growth status of nails reflects the physiological condition of human body. The diseases can be predicted and prevented effectively by nail diagnosis. In the nail structure, the lunula and nail plate are important reference frames. The proportion of lunula to the nail plate reflects the human health status. Therefore, this paper proposes an image preprocessing method, trying to segment different parts of nail: lunula and nail plate. In the data of poor image quality, the lunula may not be presented clearly. In order to maintain the nail image quality, this paper uses microscope to capture nail image. Besides lunula and nail plate, the nail details, such as free edge, cross striation and longitudinal striation, can be seen clearly in the image captured by microscope. More details are displayed, meaning the complexity of image processing is increased. At the present stage, this paper only implements a series of image preprocessing steps for the separation of lunula and nail plate. The experimental results show that the effect is significant. It can be used in medical diagnostic system, biometric authentication or other biometric applications in the future.