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. 2010 Nov 12:11:558.
doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-11-558.

Leukocyte nucleus segmentation and nucleus lobe counting

Yung-Kuan Chan  1 , Meng-Hsiun Tsai, Der-Chen Huang, Zong-Han Zheng, Kun-Ding Hung
Affiliations

Leukocyte nucleus segmentation and nucleus lobe counting

Yung-Kuan Chan et al. BMC Bioinformatics. .

Abstract

Background: Leukocytes play an important role in the human immune system. The family of leukocytes is comprised of lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils, basophils, and neutrophils. Any infection or acute stress may increase or decrease the number of leukocytes. An increased percentage of neutrophils may be caused by an acute infection, while an increased percentage of lymphocytes can be caused by a chronic bacterial infection. It is important to realize an abnormal variation in the leukocytes. The five types of leukocytes can be distinguished by their cytoplasmic granules, staining properties of the granules, size of cell, the proportion of the nuclear to the cytoplasmic material, and the type of nucleolar lobes. The number of lobes increased when leukemia, chronic nephritis, liver disease, cancer, sepsis, and vitamin B12 or folate deficiency occurred. Clinical neutrophil hypersegmentation has been widely used as an indicator of B12 or folate deficiency.Biomedical technologists can currently recognize abnormal leukocytes using human eyes. However, the quality and efficiency of diagnosis may be compromised due to the limitations of the biomedical technologists' eyesight, strength, and medical knowledge. Therefore, the development of an automatic leukocyte recognition system is feasible and necessary. It is essential to extract the leukocyte region from a blood smear image in order to develop an automatic leukocyte recognition system. The number of lobes increased when leukemia, chronic nephritis, liver disease, cancer, sepsis, and vitamin B12 or folate deficiency occurred. Clinical neutrophil hypersegmentation has been widely used as an indicator of B12 or folate deficiency.

Results: The purpose of this paper is to contribute an automatic leukocyte nuclei image segmentation method for such recognition technology. The other goal of this paper is to develop the method of counting the number of lobes in a cell nucleus. The experimental results demonstrated impressive segmentation accuracy.

Conclusions: Insensitive to the variance of images, the LNS (Leukocyte Nuclei Segmentation) method functioned well to isolate the leukocyte nuclei from a blood smear image with much better UR (Under Segmentation Rate), ER (Overall Error Rate), and RDE (Relative Distance Error). The presented LC (Lobe Counting) method is capable of splitting leukocyte nuclei into lobes. The experimental results illuminated that both methods can give expressive performances. In addition, three advanced image processing techniques were proposed as weighted Sobel operator, GDW (Gradient Direction Weight), and GBPD (Genetic-based Parameter Detector).

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The micrographs of the five different leukocytes.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The RDE of the first experiment.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The OR of the first experiment.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The UR of the first experiment.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The ER of the first experiment.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The area ratio R of a nucleus to the related MRC.
Figure 7
Figure 7
The white blood cell with obscure fracture.
Figure 8
Figure 8
The flowchart of leukocyte nucleus segmentation processing.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Two convolution masks of Sobel operator.
Figure 10
Figure 10
The gradients obtained by the weighted Sobel operator with different rs.
Figure 11
Figure 11
The difference of contour gradient directions of objects and noises.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Four θL-partitions of W.
Figure 13
Figure 13
The images before and after processed by GDW.
Figure 14
Figure 14
IG and its corresponding Ib.
Figure 15
Figure 15
Eight structuring elements for thinning.
Figure 16
Figure 16
The results after thinning and trimming spurs.
Figure 17
Figure 17
Eight structuring elements for trimming spurs.
Figure 18
Figure 18
The result after region combination.
Figure 19
Figure 19
The segmentation results obtained in the leukocyte nuclei segmentation stage.
Figure 20
Figure 20
The leukocyte nuclei and their MBR.
Figure 21
Figure 21
The structuring element of erosion and dilation operation.
Figure 22
Figure 22
The procedure severing out the lobes from an object.
Figure 23
Figure 23
An example for GBPD.
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