# Segmentation of nearly isotropic overlapped tracks in photomicrographs using successive erosions as watershed markers

## TL;DR

This paper introduces WUSEM, a novel algorithm combining watershed transform and morphological erosions, to effectively segment overlapping isotropic tracks in photomicrographs, improving automatic counting accuracy.

## Contribution

The paper presents WUSEM, a new method for separating overlapping isotropic objects in photomicrographs, enhancing automatic track counting accuracy over traditional watershed techniques.

## Key findings

- WUSEM achieves a mean efficiency ratio of 0.97 in track counting.
- WUSEM reliably separates overlapping tracks in isotropic photomicrographs.
- The method outperforms classic watershed in accuracy and reliability.

## Abstract

The major challenges of automatic track counting are distinguishing tracks and material defects, identifying small tracks and defects of similar size, and detecting overlapping tracks. Here we address the latter issue using WUSEM, an algorithm which combines the watershed transform, morphological erosions and labeling to separate regions in photomicrographs. WUSEM shows reliable results when used in photomicrographs presenting almost isotropic objects. We tested this method in two datasets of diallyl phthalate (DAP) photomicrographs and compared the results when counting manually and using the classic watershed. The mean automatic/manual efficiency ratio when using WUSEM in the test datasets is 0.97 +/- 0.11.