Segmentation of White Blood Cell Areas from Colour Degraded Microscope Slide Images

Abstract

Advances in computer technology have increased in most aspects of medical analysis, such as for diagnosing diseases, treating drugs, analysing organs, and others. Computers are often used as a tool for analysis of medical images. This paper describes an automatic segmentation process of white blood cell areas on given microscopic images. The input of the system is microscope slide images with various staining conditions. Some images contain colour degradations due to imperfect staining process, while some images are in excellent staining condition. The Hough Transform method is applied for the segmentation process of the white blood cells detection. The system classifies each detected white blood cell area in one of the three defined categories (Small, Medium, and Large). The segmentation accuracy of the proposed system was 40.58% for images with colour degradation, while 100% segmentation accuracy was achieved by the system for images with excellent staining condition.