Segmentation and Counting of WBCs and RBCs from Microscopic Blood Sample Images

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Author(s)

Lata A. Bhavnani 1,* Udesang K. Jaliya 1 Mahasweta J. Joshi 1

1. BirlaVishvakarma Mahavidyalaya Engineering College, Vallabh Vidyanagar, 388120, India

* Corresponding author.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijigsp.2016.11.05

Received: 8 Aug. 2016 / Revised: 4 Sep. 2016 / Accepted: 12 Oct. 2016 / Published: 8 Nov. 2016

Index Terms

White Blood Cell, Red Blood Cell, Segmentation of Blood Cells, Counting of Blood Cells, Watershed Segmentation, Circular Hough Transform

Abstract

In the biomedicine field, blood cell analysis is the first step for diagnosis of many of the disease. The first test that is requested by a doctor is the CBC (Complete Blood cell Count). Microscopic image of blood stream contains three types of blood cells: Red Blood Cells (RBCs), White Blood Cells (WBCs) and platelets. Earlier counting of blood cell was done manually which was inaccurate and depends on operator's skill. Counting of blood cells using image processing provides cost effective and accurate result than manual counting. During the counting process, the splitting of clumped cell is the most challenging issue. This paper represents segmentation and counting of RBCs and WBCs from microscopic blood sample images. Segmentation is done using Otsu's thresholding and morphological operations. Counting of cells is done using geometric features of cells. RBCs contain clumped cells which make the task of counting of cells accurately very challenging. For counting of RBCs, two different methods are used: 1) Watershed segmentation 2) Circular Hough Transform. Comparison of both this method is shown for randomly selected images. The performance of counting methods is also analyzed by comparing it with results obtained by manual counts. 

Cite This Paper

Lata A. Bhavnani, Udesang K. Jaliya, Mahasweta J. Joshi,"Segmentation and Counting of WBCs and RBCs from Microscopic Blood Sample Images", International Journal of Image, Graphics and Signal Processing(IJIGSP), Vol.8, No.11, pp.32-40, 2016. DOI: 10.5815/ijigsp.2016.11.05

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