Image analysis combined with quantitative cytochemistry. Results and instrumental developments for cancer diagnosis.

This paper describes the application of image analysis combined with a quantitative staining method for the analysis of cervical specimens. The image analysis is carried out with the Leyden Television Analysis System, LEYTAS, of which two versions are described. LEYTAS-1 as well as LEYTAS-2 have both been designed with a high degree of flexibility and interaction facilities. A much wider range of image analysis programs is however, possible with LEYTAS-2, enabling many applications. LEYTAS-1, the earlier version, consists of a Leitz microscope with automated functions, a TV camera, the Texture Analysis System (TAS, Leitz), a four-bit grey value memory and a minicomputer (PDP 11/23). Using this instrumentation 1,500 cervical smears prepared from cell suspensions and stained with acriflavin-Feulgen-Sits have been analysed in a completely automated procedure. Image transformations working in parallel on entire fields, have been used for cell selection and artefact rejection. Resulting alarms, consisting of selected single cells and non-rejected artefacts are stored in the grey value memory, which is displayed on a TV monitor. This option allows visual interaction after the machine diagnosis has been made. The machine diagnosis was correct in 320 out 321 specimens with a severe dysplasia or more serious lesion. The false positive rate in 561 morphologically negative specimens (normal and inflammation) was 16% (machine diagnosis). Visual interaction by subtracting the visually recognized false alarms from the total number of alarms reduces the false positive rate to 11%.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

LEYTAS analysis of cytological specimens: the results of thousand cervical smears.

This paper describes the application of a television-based system (LEYTAS) in machine analysis of cervical specimens. LEYTAS basically consists of a Leitz microscope, the texture analysis system (TAS, Leitz), a TV camera, a 4-bit grey value memory and a minicomputer (PDP 11/23). A series of 1176 Feulgen stained cervical smears has been analysed in an automated procedure using image transformation for cell selection and artefact rejection. During the analysis of the entire series new artefact rejection procedures have been added to the automated analysis. This addition decreased the percentage of false positives to 15% in the last 277 analysed smears. This percentage concerns machine performance alone. A rapid visual interaction procedure decreases this percentage to 9%. Out of 210 morphologically positive smears (diagnosis Papanicolaou class 3b or more) from the total series, one smear was missed by LEYTAS using the machine classification.