Segmentation of blood smears by hierarchical thresholding

authored by

D. Wermser, G. Haussmann, C. E. Liedtke

Abstract

A major problem in the development of systems for automated differential blood count of leucocytes in the peripheral blood is the correct segmentation of the cell scene, i.e., its decomposition into nucleus, plasma, erythrocytes, thrombocytes, etc. Several algorithms have been proposed in the literature and they differ considerably in performance, expense of implementation, and speed. This paper describes a fast and simple segmentation scheme based on hierarchical thresholding. The thresholds are derived from histograms of the cell scene based on two color features used at different processing steps. Segmentation is achieved by application of several local operators to the cell scene. These operators can easily be implemented in hardware. Therefore the segmentation method is suitable for the implementation on a special fast hardware processor as part of a system for automated differential blood counting.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Information Processing

Type

Article

Journal

Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing

Volume

25

Pages

151-168

No. of pages

18

ISSN

0734-189X

Publication date

02.1984

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Environmental Science, General Engineering, General Earth and Planetary Sciences

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1016/0734-189X(84)90100-2 (Access: Closed)