Analysis of blood and bone marrow smears using digital image processing techniques
Heiko Hengen, Susanne L. Spoor, Madhukar C. Pandit · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2002
In the paper, we deal with the analysis of blood and bone marrow smears. The main aim of this long term project is to obtain a relative frequency histogram of the white blood cells of different lineage and maturity. Especially for clinical application, a proper image normalization and segmentation of the color images of blood and bone marrow smears are necessary. For the image normalization, two approaches were adopted: a) active image processing for pre acquisition standardization and b) a histogram based method for post acquisition standardization. Both methods are based on the HSI (Hue Saturation Intensity) Transform. We have developed a robust method for the declustering of the inevitable clusters of white blood cells based on a thresholded distance transform and an extended region growing algorithm that in contrast to active contours does not need any parameterization. For a successful classification, medical morphologic features are translated into feature extraction operators: the mesh structure of the cells' nucleus is analyzed using watershed transform and Gabor features, the shape of cell and nucleus is analyzed using a set of rotational invariant contour based features. The color and granularity of the cytoplasm yield further features for classification. Current work is focused on classification using the presented features.