Leukemia segmentation and classification: A comprehensive survey

Abstract

Blood is made up of leukocytes (WBCs), erythrocytes (RBCs), and thrombocytes. The ratio of blood cancer diseases is increasing rapidly, among which leukemia is one of the famous cancer which may lead to death. Leukemia cancer is initiated by the unnecessary growth of immature WBCs present in the sponge tissues of bone marrow. It is generally analyzed by etiologists by perceiving slides of blood smear images under a microscope. The morphological features and blood cells count facilitated the etiologists to detect leukemia. Due to the late detection and expensive instruments used for leukemia analysis, the death rate has risen significantly. The fluorescence-based cell sorting technique and manual recounts using a hemocytometer are error-prone and imprecise. Leukemia detection methods consist of pre-processing, segmentation, features extraction, and classification. In this article, recent deep learning methodologies and challenges for leukemia detection are discussed. These methods are helpful to examine the microscopic blood smears images and for the detection of leukemia more accurately.

Keywords: Classification; Features extraction; Features selection; Leukemia; Leukocytes; Segmentation.