Automatic segmentation and classifi cation of blood components in microscopic images using a fuzzy approach
Vale, Alessandra Mendes Pacheco Guerra; Guerreiro, Ana Maria Guimarães; Dória Neto, Adrião Duarte; Cavalcanti Junior, Geraldo Barroso; Leitão, Victor Cezar Lucena Tavares de Sá; Martins, Allan Medeiros
http://dx.doi.org/0.1590/1517-3151.0626
Rev. Bras. Eng. Bioméd., vol.30, n4, p.341-354, 2014
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Abstract
Introduction: Automatic detection of blood components is an important topic in the fi eld of hematology.
Segmentation is an important step because it allows components to be grouped into common areas and
processed separately. This paper proposes a method for the automatic segmentation and classifi cation of
blood components in microscopic images using a general and automatic fuzzy approach. Methods: During
pre-processing, the supports of the fuzzy sets are automatically calculated based on the histogram peaks in
the green channel of the RGB image and the Euclidean distance between the leukocyte nuclei centroids and
the remaining pixels. During processing, fuzzifi cation associates the degree of pertinence of the gray level of
each pixel in the regions defi ned in the histogram with the proximity of the leukocyte nucleus centroid closest
to the pixel. The fuzzy rules are then applied, and the image is defuzzifi ed, resulting in the classifi cation of
four regions: leukocyte nuclei, leukocyte cytoplasm, erythrocytes and blood plasma. In post-processing,
false positives are reduced and the leukocytes (including the nucleus and cytoplasm), erythrocytes and blood
plasma are segmented. Results: A total of 530 microscopic images of blood smears were processed, and the
results were compared with the results of manual segmentation by experts and the accuracy rates of other
approaches. Conclusion: The method demonstrated average accuracy rates of 97.31% for leukocytes, 95.39%
for erythrocytes and 95.06% for blood plasma, avoiding the limitations found in the literature and contributing
to the practice of the segmentation of blood components.
Keywords
Digital image processing, Fuzzy logic, Image segmentation, Blood analysis.