A Leukocyte Detection Technique in Blood Smear Images Using Plant Growth Simulation Algorithm

Abstract

For quite some time, the analysis of leukocyte images has drawn significant attention from the fields of medicine and computer vision alike where various techniques have been used to automate the manual analysis and classification of such images. Analysing such samples manually for detecting leukocytes is time-consuming and prone to error as the cells have different morphological features. Therefore, in order to automate and optimize the process, the nature-inspired Plant Growth Simulation Algorithm (PGSA) has been applied in this paper. An automated detection technique of white blood cells embedded in obscured, stained and smeared images of blood samples has been presented in this paper which is based on a random bionic algorithm and makes use of a fitness function that measures the similarity of the generated candidate solution to an actual leukocyte. As the proposed algorithm proceeds the set of candidate solutions evolves, guaranteeing their fit with the actual leukocytes outlined in the edge map of the image. The experimental results of the stained images and the empirical results reported validate the higher precision and sensitivity of the proposed method than the existing methods. Further, the proposed method reduces the feasible sets of candidate points in each iteration, thereby decreasing the required run time of load flow, objective function evaluation, thus reaching the goal state in minimum time and within the desired constraints.