The watershed transform in pathological image analysis: application in rectiulocyte count from supravital stained smears

Background: Morphometric studies based on image analysis are a useful adjunct for quantitative analysis of microscopic images. However, effective separation of overlapping objects if often the bottleneck in image analysis techniques. We employ the watershed transform for counting reticulocytes from images of supravitally stained smears.Methods: The algorithm was developed with the Python programming platform, using the Numpy, Scipy and OpenCV libraries. The initial development and testing of the software were carried out with images from the American Society of Hematology Image Library. Then a pilot study with 30 samples was then taken up. The samples were incubated with supravital stain immediately after collection, and smears prepared. The smears were microphotographed at 100X objective, with no more than 150 RBCs per field. Reticulocyte count was carried out manually as well as by image analysis.Results: 600 out of 663 reticulocytes (90.49%) were correctly identified, with a specificity of 98%. The major difficulty faced was the slight bluish tinge seen in polychromatic RBCs, which were inconsistently detected by the software.Conclusions: The watershed transform can be used successfully to separate overlapping objects usually encountered in pathological smears. The algorithm has the potential to develop into a generalized cell classifier for cytopathology and hematology.

Herramienta alternativa para la clasificación de células cervicales utilizando solo rasgos del núcleo / Alternative tool for classification of cervical cells using only features of the nucleus

El cáncer de cérvix uterino representa una de las mayores amenazas de muerte por cáncer entre las mujeres. Con el avance continuo en la medicina y la tecnología, las muertes por esta enfermedad han disminuido significativamente. Las investigaciones referentes a este tema han podido determinar síntomas claves que permiten detectar a tiempo esta enfermedad para darle un tratamiento oportuno. La citología convencional es una de las técnicas más utilizadas, siendo ampliamente aceptada, de bajo costo, y con mecanismos de control. Con el objetivo de aliviar la carga de trabajo a los especialistas, algunos investigadores han propuesto el desarrollo de herramientas de visión computacional para detectar y clasificar las transformaciones en las células de la región del cuello uterino. La presente investigación tiene como objetivo proveer a los investigadores de una herramienta de clasificación automática, aplicable a las condiciones existentes en los centros médicos y de investigación del país. Esta herramienta debe ser capaz de clasificar las células del cuello del útero, basándose solamente en las características extraídas de la región del núcleo y sin utilizar las características del citoplasma, de manera que se reduzca la tasa de falsos negativos en la prueba de Papanicolaou. A partir del estudio realizado, se obtuvo una herramienta haciendo uso de la técnica k-vecinos más cercanos con la distancia manhattan, el cual mostró un alto desempeño manteniendo valores de AUC superiores al 91 por ciento y llegando hasta un 97.1 por ciento con respecto a los clasificadores SVM y RBF Network, los que también fueron analizados(AU)

Cervix cancer is one of the biggest threats of cancer death among women. With continued advances in medicine and technology, deaths from the disease have fallen significantly. The investigations concerning this issue have determined key symptoms to detect the disease in time to give timely treatment. Conventional cytology is one of the most widely used techniques, being widely accepted, inexpensive, and with control mechanisms. In order to alleviate the workload of specialists, some researchers have proposed the development of computer vision tools to detect and classify the changes in the cells of the cervical region. This research aims to provide a tool for automatic classification, applicable to medical conditions and research centers of the country. This tool should be able to classify the cells of the cervix, based solely on the features extracted from the core region without using the characteristics of the cytoplasm, so that the rate of false negative Pap test is reduced. From the study, a tool is obtained using the k nearest-neighbors manhattan distance technique, which showed a high performance maintaining AUC values greater than 91 percent and reaching 97.1 percent over classifiers SVM and RBF Network, which were also analyzed(AU)

Difference of peripheral blood leucocyte percentages in malaria patients among Sysmex-XE5000,CellaVisionDM96 and manual microscope classification / 国际检验医学杂志

Objective To compare the difference of peripheral blood leucocyte percentages in malaria patients among Sysmex‐XE5000 ,CellaVisionDM96 and manual microscope classification ,and to verify the accuracy and reliability of the Sysmex‐XE5000 automatic blood corpuscle detection instrument for detecting the leukocyte classification in blood routine .Methods The leucocyte percentages data in 82 cases of malaria detected by using the Sysmex‐XE5000 in the Shenzhen Municipal Third People′s Hospital from January 2011 to December 2015 were retrospectively collected ;the peripheral blood smear in 82 cases of malaria obtained the percentages after the classification by the CellaVisionDM 96 ;then the peripheral blood smear was performed the leucocyte classifica‐tion by the manual microscopy for calculating the percentage .Results In the pairwise comparison of percentage obtained from the peripheral blood leucocyte classification by Sysmex‐XE5000 ,CellaVisionDM96 and manual microscopy ,only the monocytes percent‐age had statistical difference between CellaVisionDM 96 and manual microscopy (P0 .05) .Conclusion By comparing the peripheral blood leucocyte percentages data in malaria patients by Sysmex‐XE5000 ,CellaVisionDM96 and manual microscopic classification ,it is indicated that the leukocyte classification data by Sysmex‐XE5000 are accurate and reliable ,malaria parasite does not affect peripheral blood leukocyte classification ,but it is necessary to pay more attention to monocytes classification in CellaVision DM 96 classification .

Comparison of body fluid count and classification results detected by Sysmex XE-5000 automatic blood cell analyzer and manual method / 国际检验医学杂志

Objective To compare the body fluid count results detected by Sysmex XE-5000 automatic blood cell analyzer and manual method .Methods A total of 300 cases of body fluid specimens (including cerebrospinal fluid and fluid of serous cavity ) were analyzed .RBC ,WBC counting and classification were respectively detected by XE-5000 and manual method of improvement Neubauer counting plate .Results The fresh specimens without contain a large number of cell clusters ,which RBC counts(RBC-BF)(100-10 000)× 106/L ,and WBC counts(WBC-BF) (9-50)× 106/L ,showed there were a linear relationship between the in-strument method(r=0 .998 5 ,0 .986 3) .In the range ,there was no significant difference between XE-5000 and manual method(t=9 .96 ,P>0 .05) .Also in this range the results of instrument correlated with those of manual method(r= 0 .989 3 ,0 .971 7 , 0 .924 9) .For those specimens which contain a large number of cell clusters ,RBC-BF and WBC-BF were a badly linear relationship between the instrument method(r=0 .564 8 ,0 .456 1) .Conclusion Body fluid specimens which are fresh and do not contain a large number of cell clusters ,in the range of RBC-BF (100 -10 000) × 106/L ,WBC-BF (9 -50) × 106/L ,Sysmex XE-5000 automatic blood cell analyzer could ensure the results have good accuracy .

Performance evaluation of Sysmex XN-9000 automated hematology analyzer / 国际检验医学杂志

Objective To evaluate the performance of Sysmex XN‐9000 automated hematology analyzer .Methods According to international and domestic standards ,performance of analyzer was evaluated .Results The within‐batch and between‐batch preci‐sion ,carryover pollution rate ,linearity range and the accuracy of Sysmex XN‐9000 analyzer were all conform to related require‐ments .Leukocyte classification results compared with manual classification ,the correlation of neutrophil ,lymphocyte ,monocyte and eosinophil were fine ,but correlation of basophil was not very ideal .Conclusion The performance of Sysmex XN‐9000 analyzer could be satisfying ,could meet the needs of clinical inspection and diagnosis and treatment .

Research of automatic peripheral white blood cell classification system / 医疗卫生装备

Identification and classification of white blood cells are important for clinical diagnosis.Many researchers have been seeking the effective methods for white blood cells' automatic classification based on morphological characters.After cell segmentation,leukocytes' feature acquirement and selection,this paper accomplishes white blood cells' automatic classification using Sugeno-model fuzzy neural network and compares the result with that from classifier of BP network.