Automatic scanning of Malaria infected blood slide images using Mathematical Morphology
K.N.R. Mohana Rao · 2002
There is always a need for the development of systems to provide assistance to physicians and to relieve the physician of drudgery or repetitive work. So, more systems for automatic processing of medical images are being developed. In case of malaria diagnosis, the usual method of estimating the parasitaemia is to take number of slides and examine them manually through a microscope and count parasitaemia which is not only a time consuming task and but also prone to human error. This paper discuss the development of a system to automatically digitise the malaria infected blood slides and process them to produce information such as parasitaemia, infected and total red blood cell count as required by the physicians and the field workers. The methodology for the blood slide image processing is developed using mathematical morphology. Because of its basis on analysis of shape and size and it is well suited for this application. This paper presents various steps involved and procedures evolved for the task of developing such a system. (6 pages)